#husheduphistory

[husheduphistory]

Dead End: The Walk, Box, and Shock of Wallingford Connecticut

Founded in 1670, the town of Wallingford, Connecticut has witnessed centuries of change. Once connected to multiple influential figures in Colonial history and the American Revolution, by the 1800s the town became an industrial hub and in the later part of the 19th century Wallingford found itself featured across headlines all over the country. Unfortunately for the residents of the town, this new notoriety had nothing to do with Wallingford’s industry and everything to do with a horrible discovery.

On the morning of August 8th 1886 brothers Edward and Joseph Terrell, their friend Giles Sommers, and Edward’s dog were walking along an isolated dirt road looking for berries when they noticed something out of place. Hidden under some bushes was an 18” X 30” wooden crate with lettering on the outside claiming it was holding a “dozen pairs of finely stitched men’s shoes.” It seemed innocent enough, but when the dog approached the box its curiosity quickly turned to barking and whines of warning. Then there was the stench. The men left the scene, later returning with crowbars. When they pried open the box there were no shoes. There was straw, soaked in blood and packed around a headless human torso wrapped in tar paper.

The news of the horrific discovery sent shockwaves through Wallingford and beyond. The medical examiners estimated the torso belonged to a man between twenty-five and forty years old, weighing anywhere from 150 to 175 pounds, and that they had been dead between five and ten days before being discovered packed into the shoebox. Interestingly, the stomach was removed by the medical examiner and they discovered that there was a large amount of arsenic present in the victim’s system before he died. While this was all valuable information, it was the only information and the hope for answers quickly faded with authorities openly admitting there was very little to go on. As stated by the coroner, “This is the most mysterious case I have had since I was appointed coroner. With one exception, I have found out exactly what caused death, but this case puzzles me more than any yet. I can’t say whether or not I have obtained any clues.”

Newspaper headline about the body in the box. Image via newenglandhistoricalsiciety.com

The torso had no other bruises or injuries and it appeared the limbs and head were severed haphazardly with a knife or similar dull object. It was buried the next day but the questions continued to permeate headlines and conversations. One of the first suspected victims was Arthur J. Cooley, a Civil War veteran with very well known problems with drinking. Cooley worked at a local slaughterhouse for two decades before abruptly retiring and collecting a pension of $1,500 and his family had recently reported him missing after he was seen leaving a tavern but never returning home. But, Cooley eventually reappeared after an extended time away drinking and the mystery resumed. The next theory was more of a stretch and asked the people of Wallingford to look back to a series of fires that destroyed multiple buildings in town. Three years earlier Frank H. Morse Jr. was accused of setting two buildings ablaze that his father, Frank H. Morse Sr., was using for glass production. There was no question that it was arson, the guard was drugged prior to the fires breaking out and the charges were that Morse had his son intentionally set the blaze in order to collect insurance money. The trial of Frank H. Morse Jr. was recent, taking place only five months before the torso was found but due to a lack of evidence and Morse Jr. having an alibi that he was home the night of the fires, the charges were dropped. If Morse was truly home the night of the fires, did his father have someone else commit the crime for them and did they end up in the box as a punishment for not covering up their tracks well enough to prevent the suspicion of arson? When the torso was discovered the arson case was still open and people wondered if there was a connection. Others wondered if the murder was not an isolated incident. Only a few weeks before finding the torso in the box Edward Terrell was walking in the same area with his dog when he found the body of a deceased woman. Medical schools were questioned, rosters of missing persons were scoured, and there was no answer to who met their grisly end with a stomach full of arsenic but without their limbs and head.

With no human connections being made, authorities looked to the box for answers. The torso was packed into a wooden crate that was manufactured for a shoe factory located over 100 miles away in Fall River, Massachusetts. From there the box was filled with shoes and shipped to a wholesale boot and shoe dealer in Chicago, Illinois who then sent it to a local shoe shop. Once the crate was unpacked it was thrown in the back of one of these shops before it was sold to a man who was never identified. While this was the fairly normal lifecycle of these types of shipping cartons, the fact that it was in Chicago raised some more suspicions. Only a few months earlier in May 1886 Chicago was the site of the bloody Haymarket Riot where striking laborers fighting for workers’ rights clashed with police in Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown into the crowd killing multiple people leading to the arrest of eight labor leaders and the eventual execution of half of them. With the riot fresh in their minds, the crate’s ties to Chicago, and no other leads, people began to wonder if the crate was shipped back home from Chicago containing the body of someone involved in the riot that fell to a different form of  justice.

The absence of answers left a lot of room for speculation to thrive. One story claimed that a mysterious bag was seen at the bottom of a well that disappeared before it could be recovered and a young man claimed that he saw the box sitting in the bushes for over a week before it was found. Rumors and theories swirled but in the weeks following the discovery there were some random, but very real additions to the story. Early in the investigation pieces of scalp were found near the site of the body in the box but they provided no groundbreaking information other than the pieces pointing to the victim having dark hair. While these pieces of scalp could not be proven to be from the same victim, another discovery had a connection that was hard to ignore. On September 26th a farmer found a pair of arms and legs near the site where the bloody box was found. The limbs were not at the site when the box was originally discovered and they were wrapped in the same tar paper as the torso.

With these seemingly connected, terrible finds people began speaking up. A local Wallingford woman came forward and told the authorities that in early August a disheveled, bearded man knocked on her door asking for directions to a nearby pond. He was carrying a sack and was wearing a shirt covered in blood but she assumed he was homeless and directed him to the water. She stated that later on she saw him again, walking past her house without the sack and wearing a clean shirt. With the first real lead finally coming out the police prepared for a manhunt, but only a few days later the woman totally recanted her story stopping any progress. Another woman named Mabel Preston claimed at first to know everything regarding the murder and was subpoenaed by the court but once she was under oath she changed her story, saying she knew absolutely nothing about the crime. She didn’t have much time to change her mind again, two years later Mabel committed suicide.

With the only two possible leads revoking their information the case was left floating in limbo until it gradually began to fade from the headlines and public memory. Major news about the case would not appear again until 1926 when the former police chief of Wallingford came forward with a shocking claim. Dan O’Reilly was chief of police when the bloody box was discovered in 1886 and four decades later he spoke exclusively to The Journal, not to discuss his opinions of the case, but to say that he knew exactly who the murderer was. According to O’Reilly, he had “several reasons” for never disclosing the truth about the killing including: “…the fact that the perpetrator of the crime, that is the actual killer, has now been dead nearly twenty years and I know of no good reasons why the descendants or relatives of the murderer should be made to bear the ignominy which revelation of his identity would impose on them.” But who were these descendants that would be so affected? O’Reilly told the paper that contrary to opinions, this murderer was not some rogue bloodthirsty madman or a cold-blooded predator, he stated the killer “was no outcast beyond the pale of society, but the scion of one of New England’s oldest families, a native of New Haven county, whose ancestry traces directly back to the Mayflower.” He also revealed details about the victim, that he was a resident of Fairfield county and that he was brutally murdered to silence him because he was aware of people involved in a “serious crime” committed against the state of Connecticut. Despite these salacious claims and the decades gone bye he reiterated that he would not change his mind on his secrecy, stating: “…I shall carry this secret, already locked in my heart for twenty years, to the grave with me.” O’Reilly kept his promise, never disclosing the name of the killer.

Story printed by The Journal where former chief Dan O'Reilly claimed to know the killer. Image via newspapers.com.

The “Wallingford Shoebox Murder” was never solved and is still considered an open case despite the trail going cold nearly 140 years ago. Today the most prominent remnant of the crime stands silent, but in plain sight with the road where the box was discovered now being officially named Shoebox Road.

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Sources:

Kilianski, Michael. “The Connecticut Shoebox Murder Mystery: America’s Oldest Cold Case.” Blogspot.com, 23 May 2021, creativehistorystories.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-connecticut-shoebox-murder-mystery.html.

Landrigan, Leslie. “The Mystery of the Wallingford Shoebox Murder.” New England Historical Society, 8 Aug. 2015, newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-mystery-of-the-wallingford-shoebox-murder/.

Mangan, Gregg. “The Shoe Box Murder Mystery.” ConnecticutHistory.org, 8 Aug. 2020, connecticuthistory.org/the-shoebox-murder-mystery/.

“Notorious Shoe Box Murder No Mystery to Dan O’Reilly Knows Who Was the Slayer.” The Journal , 7 Aug. 1926, www.newspapers.com/article/the-journal/172560421/.

[conspiratortrue]

The Devil Went Down to Devon

Take a little trip with me for a moment...

The year is 1855, on the cold morning of February 9th you wake up, stoke the fire, perhaps cook some breakfast. Then you dress yourself and prepare to leave to take care of some business of some irrelevant sort or another. And as you step outside, you find a series of horse tracks leading directly through your snow covered front yard.

At first you might assume that perhaps you’ve been the victim of some sick joke, or even some poor idiots misfortune as his horse ran him awry.

But you would quickly realize that neither of these were possible. Especially considering every house in town had been visited by these strange tracks, and that it would be impossible for these tracks to have been made by a four legged creature. So people did the natural thing.

They blamed the supernatural.

Most modern scholars would attribute it to some hoax, or perhaps an animal. But no troublesome teen can walk on top of houses without leaving some sign of having scaled the wall or leapt down from the other side. And no rabbit, badger, or escaped kangaroo can cover 40 miles of country in six hours. Nor would it be likely for an animal to pass through every yard or across every roof top without breaking pace.

So who was this mysterious visitor?? Was this Satan himself??

Or was it all a hoax??

The world may never know the truth. And the tracks never appeared again, aside from a few obvious pranks. What do you think?

Source: @husheduphistory

[husheduphistory]

A Tale of Two Tombs: The Church Hill Tunnel and the Convoluted "Creature"

Strolling through the city of Richmond, Virginia means taking a walk through one of the oldest cities in America and being able to visit sights and structures that saw countless chapters of the earliest parts of American history. Visiting Jefferson Park, located on Union Hill, offers visitors walking paths, a playground, and a picturesque view of the modern city skyline. It’s a pleasant scene, and one that does not at all hint at what lay hidden underneath the earth of Jefferson Park.

Skyline of Richmond, Virginia. Image via Bruce Emmerling, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Church Hill Tunnel of Richmond, Virginia was built with a purpose of advancement, looking to leave behind the aftermath of the Civil War and bring in new progress. Completed in 1872 by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), the railway was built as an extension in order to reach a new coal pier located in the city of Newport News, bringing a new logistical connection to the exportation of coal from the area. The plan sounded good, and upon completion the tunnel was one of the longest in the country at nearly 4,000 feet in length, but the initial victory of completing the tunnel came after multiple problems that should have been seen as a warning.

The first issue with the Church Hill Tunnel was the very earth it was being constructed from. Unlike other tunnels carved through bedrock, Church Hill was created through layers of limestone and soft clay, deeply unstable soil that would shift and swell up when exposed to any moisture and shrink back again when dried. With the volatile soil structure there was no way to ensure the safety of the tunnel and during construction there were multiple instances of portions of it collapsing, taking the lives of the men working inside. Land around the work area began to react to the construction and in one instance the ground gave way, toppling the house of a minister and breaking a gas line. The marvel was also a menace and upon the completion of a new viaduct in 1901 the Church Hill Tunnel was closed and fell into disuse. It should have stayed that way.

While the city of Richmond grew and flourished in the early part of the twentieth century the Church Hill Tunnel lay dormant, looming like a great void out of the earth. That is, until 1925 when after over twenty years of non-use the city decided it was a monster worth bringing back to life.

Given that the tunnel had been left dormant for decades there were extensive repairs that needed to be completed before it could be used once again. These repairs were underway on October 2nd 1925, a cold and rainy day in Richmond that seemed ordinary before the Church Hill Tunnel experienced something that was both unthinkable, but also tragically familiar. The tunnel was bustling with activity and engineer Tom Mason was guiding a train with ten additional flat cars into the west entrance of the tunnel on his first day as an engineer. Then, the bricks began to fall. The collapse of the tunnel was as fast as it was terrible with bricks, debris, and clay falling all around the workers and the train, burying it under the weight of the earth. Electric wires were cut plunging everyone into darkness and some of the trapped men took out their knives and started slashing wildly into the dark, trying to cut through anyone who stood in their way of getting out. Workers scrambled to escape, most miraculously making it to the eastern entrance a mile away and walking from the site with their lives. But others were not as lucky, 190 feet of the tunnel had fallen in on itself and the entire train was buried along with the bodies of Tom Mason and at least two other workers. Fireman Benjamin F. Mosby was hard at work shoveling coal when the locomotive was crushed. He was able to escape but when he staggered out of the east entrance he was horrifically scalded from the steam from the engine and his teeth were broken. He died later that night at Grace Hospital.

The Richmond Times Dispatch reporting on the tunnel collapse.

In the aftermath of the tunnel collapse there were questions, but unfortunately the reason why it happened was known, the tunnel’s history was marred by multiple collapses, and this was not even the first time it claimed human lives. The bigger question now was how to proceed. The body of engineer Mason was able to be recovered but finding the other workers, later identified as Richard Lewis and H. Smith, was impossible. After nine days of efforts to recover their bodies (and after more sections collapsed) it was determined that any further activity in the Church Hill Tunnel was simply too dangerous. The next year the entrances of the tunnel were sealed off, with a giant “1926” inscribed on the mossy, wet stone covering the western entrance. The train and bodies remained entombed inside.

Over the decades since the collapse the tunnel has continued to cause problems, in 1962 another collapse swallowed a house and another worker lost their life to the tunnel. There have been multiple plans to recover the train and the bodies, but the continuing collapses and state of utter disrepair halted further efforts. In 2006 the Virginia Historical Society proposed trying to get into the tunnel once again, but upon drilling a hole in the seal and peering at the inside with a camera it became clear that it would not be possible. The tunnel is filled with water and sand and manipulating it in any way could result in further collapses and severe damage to homes currently standing on Church Hill. Any recovery plans are indefinitely on hold.

Plans for recovery of the train and the bodies of those still entombed inside the Church Hill Tunnel is not the only thing that brings the collapse into present-day conversation. Then there is the vampire.

When twenty-eight-year old Benjamin F. Mosby staggered out of the east end of the tunnel he was the picture of pain and suffering. His teeth were broken, he was bloody, and according to people at the scene his flesh was hanging in ribbons, torn from his body after being blasted by the scalding steam from the locomotive. As the stories of the collapse spread one stated that a “creature” covered in blood and with a mouth of sharp teeth ran from the tunnel, eventually making it to the nearby Hollywood Cemetery where it disappeared into the mausoleum of W.W. Pool, a striking structure with a metal gate and an inscription only reading “W.W. Pool 1913.”

Article in the Richmond Times Dispatch about a tribute to Mosby after his death.

This “creature” which has become known as the Richmond Vampire, is a popular story, but the background is a messy jigsaw of events, rumors, and innocent people denied their eternal resting place. It is almost certain that the figure described as bloody and ghastly with a mouth of sharp teeth emerging from the tunnel was Mosby, moving away from the horror in a state of shock before other people at the scene lay him down on an embankment and began to pour water on him to try and soothe some of his pain. He was reportedly calm, asking that someone let his wife know he was alive and ok. As for the connection to the final resting place of W.W. Pool, there is a rumor that Pool found himself in the United States after being run out of England for practicing vampirism. This rumor is purely that. Pool was born in Mississippi in the 1840s, moved to the Richmond region in the 1860s, died in 1922 (on the same day as one of his closest friends) and had an elaborate funeral including Masonic rites given his membership to the Freemasons. So is the origin of the Richmond Vampire a case of tragic proximity? There are the accounts of seeing a creature emerging from the tunnel and the rumor of Pool and vampirism but the two became intertwined over time, carried into the future by word of mouth and sensationalist storytelling. It is a story of wildly convoluted origins, but it is a persistent one. Visitors to the Hollywood Cemetery regularly ask if there is a vampire buried there and more disturbingly, the remains of W.W. Pool and his wife were removed from the mausoleum due to vandals breaking in, drawing symbols on the walls, and allegedly trying to steal parts of their bodies.

Hundreds of people visit the Hollywood Cemetery of Richmond looking for the tomb of a monster, the physical remains of a real-life horror story. The true tale of terror though, can be found three miles away where a large stone wall inscribed with only “1926” stands between the visitor and a tragic scene where a train and at least two bodies lay frozen in the moment when the earth caved in and took their last breath from them.

The sealed western entrance of the Church Hill Tunnel. Image via Eli Christman from Richmond, VA, USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Sources:

Branch, Ashley. “Starting with the Church Hill Tunnel Collapse, a Filmmaker Is Uncovering Virginia’s Buried History.” VPM, Virginia’s home for Public Media, 30 Sept. 2021, www.vpm.org/2021-09-30/starting-with-the-church-hill-tunnel-collapse-a-filmmaker-is-uncovering-virginias.

Castleton, David. “The Richmond Vampire - Virginia’s Tunnel-Haunting Nosferatu - David Castleton Blog - the Serpent’s Pen.” David Castleton Blog - the Serpent’s Pen, 21 Apr. 2021, www.davidcastleton.net/richmond-vampire-hollywood-cemetery-w-w-pool-church-hill-tunnel-virginia/.

Feather, Lauren. “This Richmond Park Is Home to a Sealed Tunnel (with an Unusual History).” TheTravel, 10 Dec. 2022, www.thetravel.com/church-hill-tunnel-in-richmond-virginia-history/.

Holmberg, Mark. “Mark Holmberg Shares the Story of How the Richmond Vampire Came to Haunt Virginia.” CBS 6 News Richmond WTVR, 31 Oct. 2023, www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/mark-holmberg-vampire-richmond-cemetery-oct-31-2023.

[husheduphistory]

Mud, Trash, and a Bizarre Past: George Daynor and his Palace Depression

When the first fall chill of 1929 began creeping in few people suspected the turmoil that was just around the corner. Typically associated with October 24th 1929 the “Black Tuesday” Wall Street Crash saw values of shares suddenly plummet leaving thousands of investors penniless with only memories of their previous fortunes. The aftermath varied from person to person, some were able to rebuild over time, some found themselves unable to ever grasp the same level of wealth again, and others took the lemons handed to them….and made legends.

When Black Tuesday stole the dreams from so many pockets George Daynor was one of the many who felt the profound loss of the Crash. According to Daynor himself, he was a former gold miner in Alaska, making and losing multiple fortunes before again losing it all to Wall Street. Left with only a few dollars to his name the striking bearded and mustachioed man claimed that he was guided by an angel to make the ten-day and 112-mile-long hike that brought him to Vineland, New Jersey. Once arrived he needed a place to call his own and he found a junkyard situated on some marshy land with the price tag of seven dollars. Seven dollars was exactly how much Daynor had. It was now his life savings, and he traded it for the swamp.

It was a bleak existence, sleeping in a void filled with metal scraps, bottles, and all manner of refuse, but it was in this land of disregard that Daynor claims he once again encountered divinity. One night he claims that the angel appeared to him again and encouraged him not to leave, but to build. And build is exactly what Daynor did. He collected everything available to him, car parts, bed frames, glass, trash, and mud and began to create a structure that went far beyond just a place to live. Daynor began to construct a palace. The work was intensive, complicated, and Daynor worked on his project day after day, fueled only by whatever squirrels, frogs, and other wildlife could be captured for food and only escaping the elements in an old van that served as shelter. Three years later the self-proclaimed former gold miner was ready to introduce New Jersey to his creation, the Palace Depression.

Upon its completion the Palace Depression was a grand structure that included eighteen turrets, archways, domes, and revolving doors. It was a marvel, brightly colored in all shades of paint and with adornments of shells and metal filling in detail, Daynor proudly proclaimed it was the “strangest house in the world.” But, he had a much bigger message to spread with the construction of his Palace Depression. Despite the initial impression given by the name, the palace was a symbol of hope, creativity, perseverance and encouragement from Daynor. He claimed that the very existence of the structure was an inspirational message that, like him after the Crash of 1929, you could prevail from hardship and do something amazing. He called his creation “the greatest piece of originality ever brought about in the history of Man,” and stated that “the only real depression is a depression of individual ingenuity.”

When the Palace Depression opened its doors on Christmas Day in 1932 the visitors who paid twenty-five cents per tour were greeted by something they had never experienced in both the structure and also in the eccentric and extroverted George Daynor. Standing at over 5’10” and typically dressed in flannel with red-brown hair down to his shoulders and making up his moustache and full beard, he was a striking figure with a past filled with mystery and a fantastical story for every soul who visited his palace. He claimed to have made a fortune as an Alaskan miner, at one point surviving a shipwreck and swimming to shore in Alaska only to have to fight off claim jumpers before claiming victory and taking back his mine. Another story told of how he viciously fought against more claim jumpers who hid him in a tunnel before his loyal dog (who he says he saved from drowning in the Yukon River) not only found and freed his master but also stole the deed to Daynor’s property back from a saddlebag of one of his captors before the pair fled on foot, ran into the Royal Mounted Police, and got into a shootout with the claim jumpers before again coming out victorious. He also told how he spent time in San Francisco, living in a mansion he purchased with his mining fortune before the structure collapsed taking all of his belongings, and all documentation of the details of his early life, with it into the ground. This apparently is when he made his way east and got involved in the stock market that would eventually again render him penniless.

A later postcard advertising the Palace Depression. Image via the Boston Public Library.

He arrived in Vineland and built his palace, but one thing that was not widely known at the time was that he did not come alone. When Daynor arrived in New Jersey, claiming to be guided by angels, he arrived with his wife, Florence. She lived with him in the van, hunted for their food, and helped him in every single step in piecing together the building that would bring him fame. But, she would see none of the positive outcome of her backbreaking work. Whenever people came to the Palace for a tour Daynor told his wife she needed to lock herself away in a room, only ever seen by the public in the ticket booth collecting the fees for tours.

Upon arriving at the Palace Depression visitors were presented with a sight of pure intrigue and they could hear all about it from Daynor himself. Dressed in his prospector clothes and standing in some elevated space, his booming voice would tell everyone present that he is the man who built this place “without plans, money, or tools.” This originality was evident at every step of the visit. The kitchen featured an eight-foot-tall fireplace illuminating a table made from a tree trunk and stumps serving as seating. The room was painted in hues of reds, a shade Daynor created from pulverized bricks and old oil. The walls throughout the buildings were decorated with carved animals, there was an indoor wishing well, a room of homemade drums and instruments, and Daynor made sure to build a room specifically for the Jersey Devil. He claimed he was good friends with the demon of the pines and there was a bell over one doorway that would ring randomly prompting Daynor to scream that the Jersey Devil was coming. There was also a radio room, one that he said he could use to warn the town in case of an enemy attack by Communists. Another feature was the “Knockout Room”, a bathroom where Daynor offered the extra service of being hit in the head with a bowling ball so that you could forget all of your troubles. The knickknacks and oddities took root in every inch, including a note on a wall encouraging visitors to follow a trail that a turtle once took to get to the other side of the house.

Postcard advertising the Palace Depression and Daynor. Image via the Boston Public Library.

Daynor’s Palace Depression and some of his commentary may have made some think he was a madman, but what it definitely did make him was famous. Newspapers wrote about the eccentric man and his palace in the Vineland swamps, he was invited to appear on radio shows, and in 1938 the structure was filmed by Universal Pictures for a movie short entitled The Fantastic Castle which was screened in theaters all over the nation. The publicity was something Daynor relished in, and he was extremely gifted at self-promotion, always looking for ways to make money and spread the word. He was willing to talk to anyone, he created a massive postcard series showing different scenes from The Palace Depression (many of which included him in the images) for people to buy and collect, and had items like pennants available to purchase as souvenirs. The publicity and self-promotion worked and Daynor and his Palace were soon being recognized by high-standing government officials, had their likenesses illustrated for well-known publications, appeared in ads for Waterman pens and comic books, and his records claim that between 1932 to the mid-50s over 200,000 people walked through the concrete, glass, and metal doors of The Palace Depression.

Another of the many postcards featuring Daynor for the Palace Depression. Image via the Boston Public Library.

Despite Daynor’s media presence and his marketing skills, by the 1950s the Palace Depression was fading from the spotlight. This became a huge problem for Daynor, the years of attention and admiration were firmly wired into his brain and now he needed the publicity like he needed oxygen. He did find ways to stay in headlines and conversations, but it was for all the wrong reasons. In 1939 he was arrested for assault and battery but was released on a bond. In 1948 he was again arrested for stealing drain piping from the County Road Commission, but he agreed to return the pipe and went about his life without any further repercussions for the theft. If he was not on one side of the law he was on another and by 1950 Daynor had been in court over twenty times after suing his neighbors for all kinds of reasons. In 1952 the eccentric and increasingly desperate king of the Palace began telling newspapers that he had won the Cuban lottery the previous summer. By this time, Daynor’s reputation was already tarnished and no one was interested in his story which in some ways had the same tall-tale qualities as his accounts about his time mining in Alaska. According to his story, he won the Cuban lottery and traveled to New York City to meet two men for his cash but after receiving his winnings he was having difficulty finding a bank to exchange his one million pesos for dollars. He was going back to his hotel when he said two other men jumped into his taxi and took off with his money still in a suitcase inside. Naturally, there was no record or indication that this ever took place and Daynor looked to close the conversation in April 1952 by saying the President of Cuba reached out to him directly and also that his suitcase was found in Brooklyn completely cleared of his Cuban lottery winnings, but with a few postcards for The Palace Depression remaining inside so that people would know it was truly his stolen bag.

Later in 1952 Daynor had another loss, but this one was not spoken of in the same exaggerated, newspaper-headline manner, it was actually not spoken about at all. Florence, his rarely-seen wife who had to handle Daynor’s madness behind the walls of the Palace, disappeared. She was allegedly taken from the Palace Depression by a group from a local church who took it upon themselves to free her from her bizarre, and possibly terrifying circumstances. Daynor himself never acknowledged her absence, but he started taking a more erratic turn. Now regularly wearing bright red lipstick and hairbows, he would walk down the main roads in town deliberately looking to frighten any of the small children walking by with tales of monsters coming to eat them.

While some of this might be talked away as just the actions of an eccentric old man, what came next for Daynor was inexcusable and totally self-inflicted in the name of publicity.

 In 1956 Westbury, New York was a quiet town and on July 4th 1956 Betty Weinberger felt very comfortable leaving her one month old baby Peter asleep in his carriage on the front porch of her home while she went back inside for a few minutes. When she came back out the infant was gone and a ransom note demanding $2,000 was in the carriage. The story of the missing Weinberger baby spread all over the United States as everyone waited along with the baby’s parents for any news of his whereabouts. While law enforcement from all over and the FBI were trying to locate the missing baby, everyone suddenly started hearing from George Daynor. He began contacting the FBI, the New Jersey State Police, local law enforcement, anyone he could, and began swearing that the Weinberger baby had been brought to the Palace Depression on July 8th by a man and a woman who claimed they were on their way out west. When authorities did not react as fast or as strongly as he wanted them to he started reaching out to media outlets that he “knew” the Weinberger baby had been at his Palace Depression but he refused to give any more details over the phone.

When authorities finally visited Daynor at the Palace Depression he presented them with another far-fetched story that a man and a woman arrived at the Palace in a black 1950 Ford and was part of his tour. He claimed that he noticed that the pair seemed uncomfortable with the infant so he became suspicious and after the tour he began talking with them and offered to adopt the baby for $5,000. According to his story, the pair agreed to this deal because they were moving and could use the money. Daynor said he gave them $10 and the baby was to be delivered to him at a later date. He then shared his opinions that the kidnapping took place because the baby’s father, a druggist, was selling illegal substances on the side and that the pair now traveling with his baby were addicts who stole his child for not just money but also revenge. He gave descriptions of the pair, told authorities what hotel they were staying at, and although Daynor made sure that every single guest to the Palace Depression always signed his guest book, somehow he missed that they did not sign it so he could not provide authorities with any names.

The police were extremely hesitant to listen to Daynor. He had developed a reputation for trying to force himself into high-profile events going on and he was well known for his fabrications, but time was running out and they needed to treat any lead seriously. Law enforcement went to work visiting local hotels all of which said no one was staying in their establishments with a baby. They also interviewed others who were on the Palace Depression tours that day (who did sign the guest book) and all of them, including one guest who was a Vineland police officer, confirmed there was no one on their tours matching the description of the man or woman, and there were no babies on their tours. Following the loose threads of Daynor’s story was exhausting with him calling multiple reporters, media outlets, and claiming that he arranged for radio personality Walter Winchell to bring him $5,000 to trade for the baby that the couple was going to bring back to him on July 11th. Authorities monitored the Palace Depression all day on the 11th but by 1pm they were growing impatient. They sat down again with Daynor who claimed the couple did arrive but that they saw the police and fled. After more questions and more claims, Daynor finally admitted that he had made the entire story up for publicity. He admitted it was all a lie not out of guilt but because he “did not want to undermine the Palace Depression.”

The reaction to Daynor’s lies were furious and far-reaching with J. Edgar Hoover himself being brought into the question if Daynor could be prosecuted for his actions. The debate on the decision went into October and on October 18th 1956 Daynor was arrested and spent the night in jail before being released to await trial before a federal grand jury.  When the trial finally took place Daynor took the stand himself stating that the FBI agents testifying against him were all lying and when asked why they would be doing so he replied “They’re jealous of me. They can’t see anything but Barnum and Baily in George Daynor.” The deliberations were fast and in less than an hour Daynor was found guilty of making false statements to the United States Government. Sentencing was postponed multiple times due to a number of questions about Daynor’s background, his actual age, and the question of existing family that could not be proven, but in August of 1957 Daynor began to serve his sentence of one year in prison.

Daynor at the time of his sentencing as he appeared in The Press of Atlantic City. Image via newspapers.com.

While Daynor wallowed in prison the Palace Depression crumbled, torn to pieces by vandals and with no maintenance the once magnificent testament to human will and creativity fell into ruin. When Daynor returned home after serving his sentence he told reporters that there was extensive damage and many of his belongings were stolen but, he said, “I can always start over again.”

For several years Daynor tried to bring the Palace of Depression back into the minds of the public but both the structure, and he, continued to decline. On January 31st 1964 a dazed and emaciated Daynor was found wandering the streets in the freezing cold and he was transported to the Cumberland County Almshouse in Bridgeton, New Jersey. He resided there for approximately six months before he was moved to Cumberland County Hospital and on October 19th 1964 George Daynor passed away, penniless, leaving the Palace Depression behind as a shell of its former self. He had requested to be buried on the property, but out of concern for no one maintaining the grave Daynor was quietly cremated and buried in a pauper’s grave in Oakhill Cemetery in Vineland, New Jersey.

With Daynor now passed the question became as to what to do with the remnants of the Palace Depression. At this point there were few people in Vineland that thought kindly of Daynor but there were some that wanted to rebuild the palace and turn it into a landmark. To do so they needed to reach out….to Florence.

After fleeing the grasp of George Daynor, Florence was able to lead a successful life working as a nurse and moving often due to the nature of her job and it was in 1962 that she was approached about the sale of the property. Florence responded, voicing her concern that the county might try to claim the money of the purchase to cover George’s care in his last years, but even more of a concern to her was the story that was to be told about the Palace Depression. She reported back that despite what her former husband may have told everyone, the palace was far from a one-man project, clarifying how she was an integral part of the construction stating “There is no phase of this laborious task that Mr. D did alone – from the clearing of the swamp – help in pulling the monster logs to the surface or the actual construction of the palace.” After much work, research, and thought, Florence released her rights to the property in September 1966 and the world of the Palace Depression was sold for $3,000.

With the news of the sale, people and the media began to turn to Florence wanting to know about her time at the Palace Depression with some requesting to interview her and others saying she should write a book about her experiences. Florence though, had vastly different thoughts and preferred to keep her time at the Palace as much in the past and as far away as possible. The few stories she shared about her time there were not pleasant and the trauma of her time in Vineland lingered long after she left. She made the trip back to accept the payment for the sale then continued working as a nurse in southern New Jersey before retiring. She passed away in August 1978 and was laid to rest in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where her last remaining family was located.

The Palace Depression was formally condemned in 1966 but a group of residents approached the Mayor of Vineland voicing their interest in saving the structure. They were given three weeks to form a plan but they were unsuccessful and plans moved ahead to have the whole site cleared to make way for a park. The structures were leveled, cited as a public hazard, and the location once again became a dumping ground. At the same time as the land was being proposed as a site for low income housing, Vineland resident Kevin Kirchner was working as Vineland’s construction official for the Department of Licenses and Inspections and with the memories of his visits to the Palace Depression fresh in his mind he knew he did not want to see that chapter of Vineland’s history erased. He gathered a team of hundreds of volunteers and formed the Palace of Depression Restoration Association with the goal of rebuilding the palace as a tribute to Daynor and the attraction that put Vineland on a nationwide radar. Their reconstruction work began in October 2001.

For decades the spirit of the now re-named Palace of Depression was slowly and faithfully brought back to life, spearheaded by the father and son team of Kevin and Kristian Kirchner and volunteers like Jeff Tirante who was married at the original ticket booth of the Palace Depression, the only structure left when the palace itself was demolished. The work of the Kirchners, Tirante, and hundreds of volunteer hands were able to bring the Palace of Depression out of the rubble, and over the decades the Palace has been slowly resurrecting in the same space where it once stood. Tragically, Kevin Kirchner passed away in December 2021 and his son Kristian passed away the following year. Now, a group of dedicated volunteers lead by President of the Palace of Depression Restoration Association Steve Medio are continuing the work started by the Kirchners and so many who dedicated their time, energy, resources, and funding to bring the Palace back to its former glory.

When George and Florence Daynor began building the Palace Depression in 1929 it was, in the words of Florence, “to be the story of how a man and wife, working together, could turn adversity into success.” The history of hardship and adversity is something that has followed the Palace of Depression through every one of its years and has been faced by all of those involved in giving it life, both the first and second time. But, the original message of the structure also survives, success through adversity, and today the Palace of Depression is still taking the steps to one day open the gates once again and welcome the public in to “the strangest house in the world.”

For an incredibly in-depth look at the story of George Daynor and the Palace Depression please check out The Fantastic Castle of Vineland: George Daynor & The Palace Depression by Patricia A. Martinelli.

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Sources:

Martinelli, Patricia A. The Fantastic Castle of Vineland: George Daynor & The Palace Depression. History Press, 2012.

Brianna Hill, Gina E. Kim. “Vineland’s Palace of Depression Is Flourishing with the Aid of Volunteers.” WHYY, 28 Aug. 2023, whyy.org/articles/palace-of-depression-vineland-new-jersey/.

“Hailed the Strangest House in the World: The Palace of Depression: Ripley’s Believe It or Not!: Aquariums, Attractions, Museums.” Ripleys.Com, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, 6 Jan. 2024, www.ripleys.com/stories/the-palace-of-depression.

“A Look Back: Vineland’s Palace of Depression.” The Daily Journal, 18 Nov. 2015, www.thedailyjournal.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2015/11/18/a-look-back-vinelands-palace-of-depression/75985238/.

[husheduphistory]

Mystery and Missing: The Tragic Trails of the Bennington Triangle

Nestled into the southwestern region of Vermont lies an expanse of wilderness stretching approximately 100 square miles. Thick with forest and natural wonders including the Glastenbury Mountain this region, roughly bordered by the towns of Glastenbury, Woodford, and Bennington, has deep rooted history including the first town created in Vermont and significant chapters in the American Revolution. It is scenic, it is historic, and to many it’s also terrifying.

 The chilling stories of Glastenbury Mountain began centuries ago when the Native American population regarded the space as sacred, but also cursed. Being the place “where the four winds meet” they used the area only for the burial of their dead and warned people not to travel the region. They also told the tale of a large and malicious stone that would swallow up anyone who stood on it.  If a curse placed by nature, a revered-but-feared burial ground, and a rock that could consume a human was not enough, there were also the tales of the wild men, large hairy human-like creatures that roamed the dense woods alongside other beasts.

Postcard showing Glastenbury Mountain. Image via legendsofamerica.com.

These tales were known but in the decades after the Civil War the old warnings faded and people now living in the region looked to transform their town. In 1872 the town began its first metamorphosis, becoming a logging community fed by the ample and seemingly endless supply of lumber surrounding them.  A train line was built extending nine miles to Bennington and three coal kilns supplied coal that would be shipped down the mountain on the rails. The operations were a success and by 1880 the little town had a school, post office, and a population of 241 people. It looked promising but in the 1890s a black cloud seemed to take a firm residency over the region.

The first strike came on April 4th 1892 when Glastenbury residents Henry McDowell and John Crowley had a confrontation. It is unknown what words were exchanged, but McDowell felt they were strong enough to warrant grabbing a rock and bludgeoning Crowley to death before escaping into the woods. He was eventually caught in Connecticut, convicted, and sent to Waterbury State Hospital. After some time though, the guards felt he could be trusted to spend some time out in the yard. Once outside he saw his moment and hid in a coal cart before making his escape. He was never seen again. Five years later in October 1897 John Harbour of nearby Woodford was found dead, killed by a single gunshot wound. His killer was never found.

It was in that same year that Glastenbury came face to face with a big problem. They were a lumber town, but they were running out of trees to cut. Given that they already had cleared land, created pathways, and had a number of silent buildings from the now-extinct lumber industry, they decided to take an entirely different turn and transform the area into a resort town with a trolley, hotel, and casino. The hopes were high, but after one season the dreams were decimated when massive flooding ravaged the town. With no trees or root systems to help alleviate the impact of the water, it ran over with nothing in its path, destroying the railways leading to the resort that was going to save the town. The flood was the death blow to Glastenbury and with seemingly no other option, the residents moved on leaving the town nearly abandoned with less than ten residents remaining. This low population was one of the reasons that in 1937 the town was disincorporated, putting it in place to officially become a ghost town.

Image showing the repurposed buildings and trolley meant to transform Glastenbury. Image via obscurevermont.com.

The region sat quietly while the wilderness reclaimed it, largely remaining out of the public eye until November 12th 1945 when it became the focus of search parties and newspaper headlines. The man they were searching for was Middie Rivers, an outdoorsman who had become closely acquainted with these woods in his almost seventy-five years. An avid hunter and fisherman, Rivers was spending the day hunting with a small party including his son-in-law. While the group was stopped near Bickford Hollow, Rivers decided to move ahead of the party. By the time the clock struck 4pm he had not returned, and the concerned hunting party went out to find him. When the group saw no sign of Rivers they traveled down to Bennington and asked Fire Chief Wallace Mattison to help them search. The search went on for days and grew to include hundreds of people and soldiers from Fort Devens in Massachusetts. Hours marched on, the sun rose and set multiple times, and the hope that Rivers was fine out in the woods that he knew so well and that he would just show back up one day quickly faded when the snow began to fall. Rivers was never found and the only thing ever recovered was a single rifle cartridge from his gun.

The tragic disappearance of Middie Rivers might have slipped away into time, but instead it unfortunately became “the first one.” 

In December 1946 eighteen-year-old Paula Jean Welden was a sophomore at Bennington College where she studied art, had an interest in botany, and worked at the college cafeteria. After her shift on December 1st she told her roommate she was going to do some hiking on the Long Trail, a 272-mile footpath that follows Vermont’s Green Mountains up to the border of Canada. She was dressed in sneakers, blue jeans, and a red parka, clothing that was fine for that afternoon but would offer no protection for the kind of cold that settled in after dark. She left just before 3pm and she was seen several times that afternoon. One owner of a gas station claims he saw a woman matching her description near a gravel pit, she began hitchhiking and was picked up by a local contractor who took her as far as his house which was about 2.5 miles from the beginning of the Long Trail. Once she began walking on the trail she encountered a group of hikers who answered some questions she had before they moved on in the opposite direction of Welden. According to some reports a local man named Ernest Whitman may have had one of the last encounters with Welden when she stopped to speak to him at his cabin. She asked how long she could go on the trail and he informed her it was four miles to a fork. He warned her that she was not dressed for the weather but she went on her way anyway.

When Welden’s roommate didn’t see her return that night she was not worried, she assumed she was just in another part of the college or in the library studying late. But, when she realized the next morning that Welden was still gone she went to the faculty. The president of the college called her parents in Connecticut and asked if their daughter was home with them. She was not. And when Welden’s mother was informed her daughter was also not at school she fainted on the spot.

Missing person flyer used for Paula Welden. Image via wikipedia.com.

The search for Paula Welden had one huge roadblock from the start, the structure of the search itself. At the time of her disappearance Vermont did not have its own state police force so the search was assembled and conducted by the president of Bennington College and Welden’s father. A group of 370 students and faculty went out to search for her, splitting into groups and throwing confetti on areas that were already searched so other groups knew that that area had already been looked at. In time both the Connecticut and New York state police were brought in to assist and a reward of $5,000 was offered. It was no use, no trace of Paula Welden was ever found.

Image used in the search of Paula Welden. Image via wikipedia.com.

It is easy to say that both Middie Rivers and Paula Welden were probably unfortunate victims of the elements in the wooded expanse that includes Bennington and Glastenbury, but the story of James Tedford is much more difficult to explain away.

It was late into 1949 and James Tedford was supposed to be back home, but he was not. The sixty-eight-year-old World War II veteran had been spending some time visiting his wife and family in Fraklin, Vermont before boarding a bus in St. Albans to return back home to the Vermont Soldiers’ Home where he lived in Bennington.

Along the way back there was a stop in Burlington where Tedford ran into an old friend and the pair chatted a bit before he once again boarded the bus on the final stretch of his ride home. When the bus stopped back in Bennington it was discovered that the veteran was nowhere to be found. His last known whereabouts was on the bus on December 1st at approximately 4pm, almost exactly three years after the last known sighting of Paula Welden in the same region. There was no question that Tedford boarded the bus, not only was he seen getting back on but his suitcase, unfolded map, and unchecked bus ticket were still sitting on his seat. He was simply gone. Shockingly, it took days for anyone to put the pieces together that Tedford never returned home and a search for the man did not take place for over a week after he was last seen. No trace of James Tedford was ever found.

Newspaper clipping about the disappearance of James Tedford. Image via vermontdailychronicle.com.

The disappearances already seen in the region were unsettling but with the end of 1950 came a string of incidents that made some people genuinely begin to question what was going on in the wilderness around Glastenbury Mountain. The first took place on October 12th 1950 when eight-year-old Paul Jepson went missing under some eerily similar circumstances. The eight-year-old was out with his mother, some report that he was with her at the local dump that they maintained, and others state he was helping her tend to the pigs near their Glastenbury farmhouse. Allegedly he was in the family pickup truck and his mother walked away to do some work before returning to the truck and finding the child missing. Like Welden he was also wearing red and his time of disappearance was between 3 and 4pm, approximately the same timeframe that Fisher, Welden, and Tedford also all vanished. A search was launched for Jepson and hundreds of people from the local region combed through the dump, the town, and went into the mountains with no success. Bloodhounds were brought in from the New Hampshire State Police and they did pick up the scent of the boy, but it was lost at an intersection near where Welden was last seen. In the days and weeks that followed Jepson’s disappearance there were reports of motorists seeing a young boy walking along a road but subsequent searches came up empty. Paul Jepson was never seen again.

Newspaper clipping about the disappearance of Paul Jepson. Image via vermontdailychronicle.com.

With the disappearance of Jepson still fresh in the minds of the locals, they very quickly found themselves facing a growingly familiar story when two weeks later on October 28th fifty-three-year-old Freida Langer also walked into the woods and seemingly vanished. Like Middie Fisher, Langer was extremely familiar with the woods so there was nothing to be concerned about when she left her family’s camp cabin for a hike with her cousin. During their walk Langer fell into a stream near the Somerset Reservoir and rather than continue on in her wet clothes she decided to walk the half mile back to the camp where she and her husband had spent every weekend for the last decade, change clothes, and meet her cousin back in the woods to resume their walk. When Langer did not return the concerned cousin went back to the family campsite and was horrified to learn that Langer had never even made it back the half mile to change her clothes. Once again a search was launched, and once again there was no sign of Langer. But, unlike all the previous disappearances, the Langer case would have closure.

Nearly six months after Langer walked into the woods two fishermen were out on the Deerfield River when they made the gruesome discovery of human remains. They had been out that morning but were not having any luck where they were so they decided to move downstream in hopes to find more fish, instead as they moved through the water something caught their eye under the grass hanging over a large water-filled hole at the bank of the river. Langer’s body was found three miles from where she left to walk back to her cabin and it took the pair of fishermen nearly three hours to hike the three miles through intensely thick forest to Somerset Road where they hitchhiked to a home to call for help. The body was badly decomposed but there was no question that the remains were Langer, on the skull was a metal plate, the result of brain surgery that she had five years earlier. It was the surgery that led to the official conclusion that Langer must have suffered a seizure, fallen in the water, and died of accidental drowning. How the experienced hiker who was so well versed in the woods ended up two and a half miles away from her familiar destination remained unknown.

Image of Freida Langer. Image via legendsofamerica.com.

Before 1950 came to a close there was one more name that would join the unfortunate ranks of souls last seen in the wilderness of southwestern Vermont. On November 29th 1950 sixteen-year-old Martha Jeanette Jones was reported missing by her parents. But, at the time she was reported gone Jones had already been missing for an entire month. She was last known to be hitchhiking to school in Manchester and traveling through the infamous region when she too disappeared. The school was under the impression that she was home while her parents assumed she was at the school. Like so many others, Jones was never seen or heard from again.

With the number of mysterious occurrences in the Glastenbury-Bennington region there are bound to be theories about what happened to the missing. There are purely logical ones, Langer may have had a seizure and drowned, the young Paul Jepson or Paula Welden may have been kidnapped, James Tedford may have decided he no longer wanted to live at the Vermont Soldiers’ Home and silently left the bus with no one noticing, one of more of the missing may have simply succumbed to the ruthless wilderness and elements. There are these theories, and there are others that believe that there is something very abnormal going on in the woods of southwestern Vermont.

The stories go back to the Native American tales of the land being cursed and a human-swallowing rock, but there was something else they spoke of, that being the “wild men” of the woods. The idea of large, hairy creatures roaming the woods is easy to dismiss as Native American legend, but there is an account of many others seeing a similar creature in the late 1800s. According to the story a stagecoach full of people were traveling through the mountains near Glastenbury during a torrential downpour that made progress nearly impossible. The stagecoach driver came to a halt and when he climbed down with lantern in hand he noticed a large set of footprints in the mud in front of them. The tale continues that people started to come out of the stagecoach to look at the footprints when the horses began to get extremely restless. Then, something hit the stagecoach with tremendous force and everyone inside scrambled out. According to their accounts whatever was hitting the coach finally hit it with a blow strong enough to knock it on its side and through the pelting rain they saw a massive human shape, covered with hair, and two huge eyes in the darkness that turned and ran back into the woods.

The creature dubbed The Bennington Monster became yet another mystery of the region, but it was looked at a little stronger in November 1943. Before the “first” disappearance of Middie Fisher in November 1945 there was the story of Carol Herrick. Herrick was also an outdoorsman and an avid hunter who went out hunting one day with his cousin Henry. Allegedly, the two men got separated and Henry contacted authorities to try and find his cousin. Carol Herrick was found days later laying near his gun that had not been fired. The cause of death was equally confusing and disturbing, it was said that his lungs were punctured by his ribs and it appeared that he had been “squeezed” to death.

Since its earliest days the forests of southwestern Vermont have been surrounded by unsettling stories. The Native American tales of the land being cursed, man-eating rocks, and wild men live in the collective memory alongside tales of beasts attacking stagecoaches, inexplicable sounds coming from the woods, and even reports of mysterious lights and flying objects being seen over the treetops. It is the disappearances though that earned the region the name “The Bennington Triangle”, coined by author Joseph Citro in 1992. When it comes to The Bennington Triangle the years between 1945 and 1950 will forever be synonymous with the disappearances of Middie Rivers, Paula Welden, James Tedford, Paul Jepson, Freida Langer, and Martha Jeanette Jones, but these names reflect only a small sliver of the strange occurrences in the woods.

The terrifying truth is that we may never fully know the extent of the unexplained that already has, and continues to unfold, in the region of The Bennington Triangle of Vermont.

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Sources:

Abramovich, Chad. “The Vanished Town of Glastenbury and the Bennington Triangle.” Obscure Vermont, 31 Mar. 2020, urbanpostmortem.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/the-vanished-town-of-glastenbury-and-the-bennington-triangle/.

Alexander, Kathy. “Bennington Triangle, Vermont.” Legends of America, Oct. 2023, www.legendsofamerica.com/bennington-triangle-vermont/.

Dailey, Eva. “The Bennington Triangle: The Ghost Town of Glastenbury Vermont.” The Looking Glass, 17 Oct. 2018, svclookingglass.com/4299/art/writing/the-bennington-triangle-the-ghost-town-of-glastenbury-vermont/.

Fair, Bethany. “History Space: Tale of Two VT Ghost Towns.” Burlington Free Press, 29 Oct. 2018, www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2018/10/29/history-space-tale-two-vt-ghost-towns/38202243/.

Leahey, Maynard. “Verdict of Accidental Drowning Closes Freida Langer Mystery.” The North Adams Transcript, May 14th 1951, https://www.newspapers.com/image/545381347/?terms=%22Frieda%20Langer%22&match=1

“Missing Jepson Youngster Makes Fourth Disappearance of Local Persons in 5 Years” The Bennington Evening Banner, October 24th 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/546025887/ 

“Missing Schoolgirl, 16, Brings To 6 Numbers of Persons Lost in Southern Vt.” The Burlington Free Press, December 13th 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/198069883/?terms=%22Paul%20Jepson%22&match=1

Page, Timothy. “Secrets of the Bennington Triangle - Vermont Daily Chronicle.” Vermont Daily Chronicle - News & Commentary for Vermont, 29 Sept. 2023, vermontdailychronicle.com/secrets-of-the-bennington-triangle/.

“74 Year Old Hunter Lost For Two Days.” The Bennington Evening Banner, November 14th 1945, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Michael_C._Dooling_Collection_MS_062/5262/ms062_01_18_middieRivers.pdf

Rossen, Jake. “The Lost Girl of Vermont’s ‘Bennington Triangle.’” Mental Floss, 26 Apr. 2023, www.mentalfloss.com/posts/bennington-triangle-paula-welden-vermont-mystery.

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Lena Clarke: The Mail, Murder, and Madness of West Palm Beach

It was a Monday evening, August 1st 1921, and Orlando Police Chief E.S. Vestal had an interesting story presented to him. The woman seated in front of his desk was Lena Clarke and she was insisting someone needed to go to a hotel downtown, specifically to room number eighty-seven, and arrest the thief inside. She identified the criminal as Fred Miltimore, and she promised if they went they would find him there. After making a phone call and verifying who she was, there was no reason for Chief Vestal to not believe her. When he sent the officers out he had no way of knowing what was about to unravel.

By all accounts Lena Marietta Thankful Clarke was a completely normal and highly intelligent child. Born in Vermont in 1886 to a well-known theologian, she, her two sisters, and brother moved around frequently until settling in West Palm Beach, Florida. The family was very successful and Lena, who began reading books on philosophy at the age of six, went on to volunteer her time working with the Red Cross, helping at her local church, and selling war bonds. As they grew older one sister became the West Palm Beach City Librarian, the other opened the first flower shop in Orlando, and her brother had a successful career working for the West Palm Beach post office for eight years until leaving in 1918. 1920 should have been a happy time for the family, but the end of the year marked the turning point in the life of Lena Clarke when her brother unexpectedly died.

After leaving the post office in 1918 due to severe hearing loss, her brother took to becoming an amateur taxidermist and a snake collector, losing his life two years into this new pursuit after being bitten by a coral snake on Christmas morning 1920. The loss would have been shocking to everyone, including his former coworkers at the post office. From 1911 to 1913 Clarke’s brother not only worked there, he was also the postmaster and when his predecessor left the job in 1920 the local businesses began to look to the familiar name of Clarke to fill the roll. Lena had already been working at the post office as an assistant, but a petition was written up for her to be appointed the new postmaster for West Palm Beach and soon thereafter thirty-five-year-old Lena Clarke had the job.

Lena Marietta Thankful Clarke. Image via findagrave.com.

Managing the workings of the post office presented many different tasks and  challenges including handling all the mail and postage, war bonds, and money orders, all of which meant there was always a large amount of cash circulating in and out of the building. On July 26th 1921 it seemed it was business as usual when Clarke had two registered mail sacks full of cash sent off to the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, but when the sacks arrived in Atlanta and were opened, there was no cash to be found. Instead of the money, between $31,000 and $42,000 depending on varying accounts, the bank found mail order catalogs cut down to the size of dollar bills. Today’s equivalent of almost half a million dollars was missing.

Understandably, Clarke was one of the first people questioned about the disappearance of the money. After all, she was the postmaster of the West Palm Beach post office where the shipment originated from but she insisted she had no idea what had happened to the money. She went home that night and resumed her life until the following week when she hired a driver to take her to Orlando where she checked into room eighty-seven of the San Juan Hotel.  

What exactly transpired in the hotel is only known to Lena Clarke and Fred Miltimore, but the version of events that Police Chief Vestal was hearing was as strange as it was simple. Lena checked into the hotel under a fake name and met with Miltimore, a former coworker who once worked as a postal worker with Lena and was now the owner of a restaurant in Orlando. She claimed that she suspected her former coworker of the theft of the money that left her post office on the way to Atlanta the previous week and she confronted him about the crime. This was all interesting but Vestal had one very important question, if he sent officers there how did she know Miltimore would still be in the room and not on the run after their confrontation. Clarke told them she knew he would still be there, because she drugged him with morphine before coming to the police station. When officers arrived at room eighty-seven they did in fact find Miltimore, but he was dead with a bullet to the chest and a gun laying beside him.

When the officers returned to the station Clarke was still there and she was immediately questioned about the dead man in her hotel room. At first she denied that she shot him but she eventually admitted to the killing, claiming that it was Miltimore who stole the money from her post office and that he was going to frame her for the crime so she simply did what she had to do and shot him. Within days Clarke was in jail and charged with first degree murder.

Headline about the murder of Fred Miltimore frpm the Chicago Daily Tribune. Image via newspapers.com

Due to her job and family Lena Clarke was a well-known figure in West Palm Beach but when she was jailed for murder the only thing that soared higher than the shock was her popularity. Her jail cell became more of a sanctuary, and she decorated it herself with some of the many flowers, gifts, and mail she received while in prison. She was even permitted to paint her cell as she pleased and was given a small typewriter to pursue her writing ambitions, eventually taking up poetry and writing her autobiography that she sold through local newspapers for twenty-five cents each. But, for every person sending her flowers there was also a critic and newspapers took to printing cruel commentary on her appearance:

“Lena Mary Thankful Clarke, if you please, is a queer combination —a bundle of contradictions. In personal appearance and dress she is far from attractive. Her figure is heavy and uncorseted and her clothes smack of the backwoods.

Her shoes are generally without heels and her stockings of cotton. Her skin is very fine in texture but covered with large, disfiguring freckles. Miss Clarke’s only assets in appearance are her hair, which is decidedly Titian and naturally wavy, and her eyes, deep blue in color and absolutely straight and unwavering in their gaze.”

Headline about Lena Clarke writing poetry in prison from the New York Times. Image via palmbeachpast.org.

Despite the criticism she seemed to be rather calm and comfortable for an alleged cold-blooded murderer, but that part of her story changed. Lena recanted her confession, now claiming she never told the police that she was involved in the death of Fred Miltimore and that in reality she was so worried about the missing money that she at one point considered taking her own life. The stress of the situation was so bad that she said she could not remember exactly what transpired between the two the night of the murder. And what of that missing money? That story also changed multiple times. After her initial confession Lena later told Chief Vestal that in 1918 while she was working as an assistant to the postmaster there was a shortage of $38,000. She claimed she had always suspected Miltimore and feared he would somehow blame her for the theft in order to ruin her chance at one day becoming the new postmaster. She then told Chief Vestal that this recent theft of money was her fault, that it was done to cover the lingering debt from the 1918 money that she suspected Miltimore of taking. Somehow, this very convoluted story led up to her being in a hotel room with Miltimore, confronting him about the initial crime and begging him to sign a statement that he was in fact responsible for the 1918 theft which he refused to do before ending up dead. In another version of events given later while she was behind bars, Lena reportedly stated that this recent theft was a standalone crime and that yes money was stolen in 1918 but a man named Joseph Elwell loaned her enough money to cover up the loss. There were some major problems with this story, one being that Elwell could not be questioned because he had been shot and killed in New York City in 1920. Another issue is that the missing money that was replaced in the mail sacks with cut up catalogs a week before the Miltimore murder was traced directly back to Lena and her bank accounts.

The story of a man named Joseph Elwell helping Lena at some point was interesting to the police, not because of Elwell personally, but because it supported a theory of theirs. During the investigation multiple people tried desperately to find “who else” was involved in the crime for a simple reason, they could not believe that Lena had forged this plan and committed murder on her own because they felt very strongly that this could not have been carried out by a woman. Multiple leads were followed trying to rope a male accomplice into Miltimore’s murder but eventually they had to admit there was no evidence. Whatever transpired in room eighty-seven of the San Juan Hotel was committed by Lena and Lena alone.   

Newspaper article showing Lena Clarke and Fred Miltimore. Image via newspapers.com.

The trial of Lena Clarke was bound to be unusual, but what unfolded in the courtroom was outright baffling. Lena’s family came together and hired multiple law firms for their daughter and their defense of insanity was hard to argue with once Lena herself spoke. As she took the stand she placed an item down in front of her, a crystal ball, and she began to tell her bizarre story. In this lifetime, yes, she was Lena Clarke but this was not her first time here, according to her this was her thirteenth life here on Earth.

Those seated in the courtroom listened as Lena gazed into her crystal ball and described in detail her twelve previous lives including when she was the goddess Isis in ancient Egypt, the lifetime that ended when she was eaten by lions, the time where she was friends with Shakespeare and inspired the character of Ophelia, and of course her first life where she was present in the Garden of Eden alongside Adam and Eve when the universe was created. This may have been her thirteenth life, but she also knew it was going to be an eventful one. She already knew she was going to be found not guilty because next for her was serving as the Vice President of the United States before becoming President after the death of the head of the Socialist party President Eugene V. Debs. The subject of Lena’s sanity was part of many conversations about the crime and many, including Miltimore’s daughter, expressed the belief that Lena was “subject to hereditary insanity.”

In order to clear out the thick speculation, three psychiatrists were brought into the case to professionally evaluate Lena’s sanity. They were split on their decisions. Two believed she truly was insane, the third believed that she did know right from wrong when she chose to end Miltimore’s life. It only took the jury three hours to decide. On December 3rd 1921 Lena Clarke was found not guilty of first degree murder by reason of insanity and was to be committed to the Florida State Mental Hospital at Chattahoochee. Upon hearing her fate Lena was distraught, stating “I would rather be hung and buried here than go to Chattahoochee.”

Lena entered the Florida State Mental Hospital, but she did not have to mourn her fate for long, in less than two years she was released and she moved back home to West Palm Beach with her sister Maude and their mother. The remainder of Lena’s life passed by quietly. She did work for her church and the Red Cross with her name appearing in various newspaper articles about relief efforts in the 1940s and 1950s and she continued writing poetry and various works on church history. Her name, once emblazoned on newsprint next to words like “murder” and “insanity” remained largely out of the spotlight. She kept to herself, taught Sunday School, and continued to live with family members before passing away in 1967 at the age of eighty-one years old.

Today Lena Clarke lays at rest next to her sister in the Woodlawn Cemetery of West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Sources:

Bisbee daily review. [volume] (Bisbee, Ariz.), 14 Aug. 1921. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024827/1921-08-14/ed-1/seq-7/>

Kleinberg, Eliot. “Florida History: The Story of West Palm Beach’s Murderous Postmistress.” The Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach Post, 9 Jan. 2022, www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2022/01/09/lena-clarke-mysterious-murderous-postmistress-west-palm-beach/9084494002/.

Morrow, Jason Lucky. The Murdering Postal Woman, Lena Clarke, 1921, Historical Crime Detective, www.historicalcrimedetective.com/the-murdering-postal-woman-lena-clarke-1921/.

Pedersen, Ginger. “Going Postal, 1920s Style - The Strnage Case of Lena Clarke.” Going Postal, 1920s Style – The Strange Case of Lena Clarke, Palm Beach Past, 30 July 2021, palmbeachpast.org/2021/07/going-postal-1920s-style-the-strange-case-of-lena-clarke/.

Schiefer, Christine, and Em Schulz. A Haunted Road Atlas: Sinister Stops, Dangerous Destinations, and True Crime Tales. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2023.

The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]), 08 Aug. 1921. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1921-08-08/ed-1/seq-3/>

[husheduphistory]

About Last Knight: The Famous Face-off of Josef Mencik

The townspeople all loved Josef, he was courteous, kind, and generous with all his neighbors. The children delighted in seeing him ride into town and loved hearing his stories. The only thing that could be better was visiting his home, filled with all manner of unique items with tales of their own that Josef was more than happy to tell. Josef Mencik was a historian, but he immersed himself in the past in ways that went far deeper than paper and ink. He may have been born in a more modern age but in his daily life Mencik was the last of the medieval knights.

As dedicated as Mencik was to history, he was extremely secretive of his own and there is almost nothing known about his early days. He never shared the names of any family members, his birthdate is a mystery, and there is no known record of where he was born with historians only able to narrow down that he was most likely born in the Böhmerwald region of Czechoslovakia. In approximately 1911 he ventured out into the world and set his sights on an aged castle in Dobrš. He decided to make it his own, but this was not going to be an easy task. The castle had been standing since the 14th century and when Mencik purchased it it was a ruin, severely damaged by a fire and countless rainstorms that left it a shell of its former self. But in this broken structure Mencik saw his ideal home and after purchasing it he began the long road to rebuilding it.

Böhmerwald region of Czechoslovakia via 1930s. Image via Wikipedia Commons.

Mencik’s idea of bringing his castle back to its glory days was meant in the most literal sense. He lived with no electricity, no plumbing, absolutely nothing representing the comforts available to him in the early 1900s. Where modernity was absent, it was replaced with beauty. The halls were lit with candles and torches and as time went on Mencik filled his home with rare antiques turning it into a literal living history museum, a time capsule of the days long past that he happily shared with anyone who wanted to see the collection of treasures. This full embrace of the medieval age extended far beyond a refurbished home and an extensive antique collection. Mencik lived his life as closely as he could to a knight, traveling on his beloved thoroughbred horse and wearing fine suits of armor crafted in France. Some accounts state that he even had a moat around his castle….filled with wooden alligator sculptures.

Josef Mencik in full armor. Image via DannyDutch.com.

Like so many parts of his past, it is unclear if he ruled his private kingdom alone. According to some accounts Mencik was married to a woman named Ema Mencikova and that they may have had two children, but this has not been proven. What is well known is that everyone who knew Mencik thought very highly of him. By all accounts he treated everyone with respect, was always willing to help anyone in any way he could, and he enjoyed spending time with his friends and neighbors. He was a regular patron of the local taverns where he would socialize with everyone, ending every visit with his personal ritual “to swallow a whole herringbone, which he then drank with a good glass of rum and then shouted menacingly."

Everyone who knew Mencik personally knew of his genuine character, but his actions on one particular day in 1938 would make sure his story was told for generations.

Images of Josef Mencik on his horse. Image via DannyDutch.com.

In an early act of aggression, in 1938 Nazi Germany moved to invade Czechoslovakia in order to annex the predominantly German region of Sudetenland. As the Germans crossed the border through Bučina they were not anticipating any resistance, but what they were met with was more stunning and confusing than they could have imagined. As they crossed they were met by Josef Mencik, seated high upon his horse, dressed in full armor, and holding a very large halberd. He met them standing strong, ready, and defiant, but he also met them alone. As the crushing, modern machines of war rolled closer to the knight he did not flinch and he stood taller as they became more confused as to what exactly they were all seeing. Unfortunately, there is no written account to tell us about the words exchanged between the knight and the Nazis, but what is known is that instead of engaging or attacking Mencik, they all simply hesitated for a short while before continuing to march past him. As they went by some Nazi soldiers tapped their helmets at him, a signal that said they believed that Mencik was simply a delusional man not to be bothered with. As they moved past Mencik they walked into an early chapter of a war that would tear the world apart.  

There are many differing opinions about the actions of Mencik against the Nazis with some feeling it was an act of pure bravery while others feel it was foolish. Regardless of opinions, it is technically true that he did successfully defend his castle home which was never taken during the war. In 1945 though, the fortress that Mencik brought back to life and made into a home where he welcomed everyone with open arms, was removed from his hands when the structure became part of the nationalization by the new Communist government. The last medieval knight Josef Mencik died only a few days later in November 1945 and was estimated to be in his late seventies.

For all his living days Mencik sought to bring the past back to life, not just for himself but also for the present to learn from and enjoy. Although he was probably heartbroken by his home becoming nationalized, today his castle is open to the public and serves as a museum, welcoming curious visitors just as he did. Josef Mencik, the last knight, passed away nearly eight decades ago but his private kingdom, his history lessons, and his story of bravery in the face of danger have withstood the test of time far longer than he could have dreamed.

The remnants of Mencik's castle and more recent additions. Image via Michal Klajban / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

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Sources:

Josef Mencik: The Last Knight Who Stood Up to the Germans In WWII by Samantha Franco. War History Online. January 11th 2023. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/josef-mencik.html

Josef Mencik – History’s Last Knight Stood Against the Nazis by Travis Pike. Sandboxx.us. November 14th 2022. https://www.sandboxx.us/news/josef-mencik-the-last-knight/

Josef Mencik-the Czech Don Quixote. WWII Forums Gateway to the Second World War. November 18th 2021. http://ww2f.com/threads/josef-mencik-the-czech-don-quixote.76341/

[husheduphistory]

The Wrath of Rampjaar: The Death and Destruction of Johan De Witt

The 1600s was a difficult chapter for human life. All over the world wars tore at the seams of land and families, and those that did not fall in battle found themselves vulnerable to falling from disease and plague brought on by forces that could not yet be understood. Many things that could not be explained resulted in further violence, fanaticism, death, and destruction dealt from one hand only to be horrifically felt by the other. Breakthroughs in science, exploration, and the arts collided with religious extremism and prejudice as humanity as a whole spun on, seemingly with chaos in every corner.

The Netherlands were one part of the world with turmoils erupting within their borders. In 1672 the country formerly known as the Dutch Republic was seeing the end of the “Dutch Golden Age” with simultaneous wars with England, France, and two German cities. The year 1672 would enter the history books as the Rampjaar, The Disaster Year. The Dutch people coined a phrase to describe this most unfortunate time: “The people were irrational, the government helpless, and the country beyond salvation.”

Allegory of the Disaster Year by Jan van Wijckersloot (1673). Image via Wikipedia.

Although it was obvious there were multiple problems facing the Dutch Republic in the 1672, some believed the problems took root decades earlier. William II Prince of Orange died of smallpox in 1650 leaving the Dutch with no official leader (referred to as a Stadholder.) It was this same year that Johan De Witt began to make his mark in the politics of the region. Johan’s family were bitter rivals of the Oranges and as De Witt began to move up the political ladder he allegedly (with the help of his powerful father who spent time in prison for his involvement in a coup d'etat of William II) quietly made moves and had words written into political documents to keep the young William III or any member of the Orange family from ruling. This allowed wheels to be set in motion to form a fully Republican regime with De Witt at the helm. After holding a number of high-standing positions he was elected to the role of Grand Pensionary of Holland in 1653, essentially making him the ruler of all Dutch provinces.

By the time the 1672 Year of Disaster loomed over the Dutch Republic the people had already endured enough war and horror to last a lifetime under the eye of Johan De Witt. There were the Anglo-Dutch Wars which threatened the land, but De Witt remained focused on the sea, taking every step possible to protect the economic interests in shipping and trading that filled his pockets while paying little mind to the forces surrounding the Dutch at their front doors. He also made it a point to delay the appointment of William III as captain general. The stubbornness of De Witt would have deep consequences when in May 1672 Louis XIV invaded the Dutch Republic, thus beginning the third Anglo-Dutch War.

Portrait of Johan De Witt by Adriaen Hanneman (1652). Image via Wikipedia.

As troops moved straight into the heart of their homeland the exhausted Dutch people felt betrayed by their leadership and all eyes turned to Johan De Witt. Some were content to simply, but loudly, voice their opinions that the House of Orange should take back their power by any means necessary. Others showed their feelings of anger and betrayal in much more aggressive ways. On June 21st 1672 Johan De Witt was attacked by a man who was armed with a knife and an intent to kill. The assailant did succeed in brutally stabbing him, but he survived. Johan’s brother Cornelis was also feeling the pressure of the simmering public and on July 24th he was arrested under charges of treason against the House of Orange. He was brought to prison in The Hauge where he was tortured in order to obtain a confession. While his brother was recovering from being nearly assassinated, Cornelis was refusing to confess to any wrongdoing and was eventually sentenced to exile.

Being attacked with a malicious blade changed De Witt and after a lengthy recovery he resigned from his position on August 4th 1672. At the time of his resignation his brother Cornelis was still wallowing in prison with his exile looming. On August 20th Johan visited his brother at the prison to assist him and see him off on what was supposed to be his date of forever departure from his homeland. It is unknown what the pair discussed that day, but it is almost certain they had no clue what was about to happen. Yes, Johan resigned and Cornelis was exiled, but the Dutch people were not ready to let the brothers walk peacefully away into a new chapter while they were left with suffering and debt that could follow them for generations. As the brothers talked in the prison they were attacked by a mob that were set on tearing them limb from limb.

The Murder of the de Witt Brothers by Pieter Fris. Image via Wikipedia.

What unfolded was a scene that was feral, ferocious, and that has gone down in history through eyewitness accounts and multiple pieces of art. The mob ravaged the De Witt brothers. They were dragged into the street, shot, stripped of their clothing, and taken to the public gallows. If the brothers thought their end would be found in a broken neck at the end of a hangman’s noose they were terribly wrong. Once strung up the mob began to take souvenirs. Some accounts report that their eyes were stolen, others say they were later cut into pieces and distributed to the masses, and while that is up for debate one thing that is certain is that their bodies were sliced open, their livers stolen, and the organs were then roasted and consumed by those in attendance. After a lifetime of prestige and twenty years in power, Johan De Witt departed life alongside his brother after being mutilated and cannibalized by his own countrymen.

The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers by Jan de Baen. Image via Wikipedia.

With De Witt gone power went to William III of Orange, the same man who had his appointment as captain general stalled by De Witt and the son of William II whose death was used by De Witt and his father to make the turn to the Republican force that they hoped would keep the House of Orange out of power for good.

Whether William III had a hand in planning the attack and death of the De Witt brothers is debated to this day with answers unknown.

Today the prison where the De Witt brothers spent their last moments on earth still stands and has been repurposed as a history and art museum.

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Sources:

That Time the Dutch ate their Prime Minister by Vlad Moca-Grama. DutchReview.com, March 3rd 2023. https://dutchreview.com/culture/dutch-history-crowds-ate-prime-minister/

A Dark and Stormy Bite: That Time a Bunch of Dutch People ate Their Prime Minister by Lillian Stone. TheTakeout.com, January 15th 2021. https://thetakeout.com/a-dark-and-stormy-bite-that-time-a-bunch-of-dutch-peop-1846044366

Johan De Witt. Encyclopedia.com.https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/johan-de-witt

[husheduphistory]

Pieces at Peace: A Sampling of Stories and Stones for Long Lost Limbs

Tombstones are endlessly fascinating for the living. Etched in stone, decorated with their own alphabet of symbols, and telling the names (and sometimes a bit of a story) of those who walked the ground before us. We are as curious about these stone last pages in the book of life as we are about the time the body spent on earth with us. While death is promised to all, a formal burial is not. But, sometimes there are burials not for a person, but for a piece of them.

Stretching across thirty-one acres of Newport, Rhode Island are the Common Burial Ground and Island Cemeteries. The Common Burial Ground was founded in 1665 and contains 7,986 known dead from all walks of life and from multiple centuries. The number of actual inhabitants is likely higher though with hundreds more lost to the soil due to time, vandalism, and the fact that some earlier markers were simple wood planks that have long since disappeared.

By 1786 stone tombstones were heavily used and one such stone in the Common Burial Ground belongs to the Tripp family, which had to be used much earlier than anyone hoped. Wait and William Tripp were only ten and twenty-two months old when they were buried under their double headstone in 1780 and 1784. Two years later they were joined by their mother, but only part of her. Desire Tripp was the wife of William, a tanner, and they lived together in a “Large and commodious dwelling house” in Newport. On February 20th 1786 her arm was amputated by Doctor Isaac Senter who noted that the amputation took place and that the cost equated to approximately one month income, but sadly there is no record as to why her arm was amputated. On the tombstone of her children there are two carved faces of cherubs but in the center of the stone there is a carved arm to represent the arm of Desire Trapp also laid to rest at this location. Noted in an inscription along with the names and dates of she and William’s children, the epitaph reads “Also his Wifes/Arm Amputated Feb 20 1786”

The tombstone of Desire's children and her arm. Image via Hopkins vastpublicindifference.com.

While it was highly unusual for a woman to have their arm amputated and to have it memorialized on a tombstone, Desire Trapp is far from the only person to have their limb buried in its own grave.

In 1898 Richard Bertram Barrett of San Jose, California was thirteen years old and living a normal life, until one day during a hunting trip he had a most unfortunate encounter with a shotgun. The shotgun blast damaged half of his left arm beyond all repair and the decision was made to amputate. The arm was buried under a tree in Hacienda Cemetery and has its own stone marker reading solemnly, “Richard Bertram Bert Barrett His Arm Lies Here May it Rest in Peace.”

Barrett went on to lead a very successful life, eventually becoming the Chief of Sanitation for the Santa Clara County Health Department and lived to see a road named for him in the same cemetery where his arm was buried. When he passed away at the age of seventy-four he was also buried, but not with his arm. Barrett’s final resting place is Oak Hill Memorial Park, a full eleven miles away from where his arm was buried sixty-one years earlier. Today the arm has become a part of local folklore with stories saying that the arm can be seen wriggling on the ground on Halloween night.

Grave of Bert Barrett's arm. Image via Weirdca.com.

In some ways the Stanley Settlement cemetery in rural northern Georgia can double as a history book of its home of Fannin County with a church and burials dating back to the mid-1800s. Among the interred are Elisha Stanely and Elv Evan Hughes, the first people to be buried here, murdered for refusing to join the Confederate army and both thrown into a single grave. It is Elisha’s son Adolphus Buel Stanley though who has the honor of having one of the more bizarre burials inside Stanley Settlement. A flat stone simply reads “The arm of Buel Stanley 1864-1946 amputated 1915 caused by fishing with dynamite in Toccoa River below Stanley Cemetery…” it goes on to inform the reader that in 1946 Stanley did not join his arm in death. Instead “…His body is buried at Macedonia Church of Christ.”

Grave of the arm of Buel Stanley. Image via Historic Rural Churches of Georgia by Tom Reed.

Losing a limb is not typically something that anyone wants, but when Captain Samuel Jones of Washington, New Hampshire learned he was going to have to part ways with one of his legs he decided he was going to make the best of it. It was 1804 when the captain was doing some construction work and his leg somehow became trapped between a building and a fence. He was eventually freed but his leg had become so mangled that it could not be saved. Captain Jones was also the owner of a local tavern so while waiting for the doctor to arrive his friends took him to the tavern and they all drank to their heart’s content. Once the leg was removed (and Smith was sober) he decided he was not done saying goodbye and decided to throw his leg a full funeral including guests and a proper burial. The leg was interred at the local cemetery, but one day some local college kids decided they wanted to steal the tombstone. After it was located in a dorm the stone was set into the ground in concrete to ensure it would never disappear again. The rest of the life of Captain Jones gets very murky, and it is believed that he ended up in Boston or Rhode Island. He was not buried with his leg.

There have been many reasons and theories as to why someone would want to properly bury their limbs, sometimes with a full funeral. According to Captain Jones, he felt that burying the leg would prevent him from feeling something doctors were aware of but could not explain, phantom leg pain. While this might have seemed funny, this discomfort where someone can still “feel” pain in their missing limb was (and is) very real and in 1878 farmer Benjamin Waldron experienced exactly what the captain was concerned about.

Benjamin Waldron was a twenty-five year old Idaho farmer and in 1878 he was working when his leg got trapped in a thresher, completely destroying it. He also went on to give his leg a proper burial in Samaria Cemetery, complete with a tombstone engraved with the image of a leg, the date of the amputation, and his initials. But something didn’t feel right after the burial, Waldron complained of pain, feeling it radiate from the leg that was no longer there, and saying that it felt uncomfortably twisted. When Waldron could not bear it anymore the leg was exhumed and sure enough, when the leg was buried it was placed in its grave at an unusual angle. Once it was re-buried in a better position Waldron finally felt relief and never felt the phantom leg pain again. Waldron finally joined his leg in the afterlife in 1914. He was also buried in Samaria Cemetery, but in a different location than his demanding leg.

Graves of Waldron and his leg. Image via Speaking of Idaho by Rickjust.com.

Waldron is not alone in his experience of feeling his disconnected limb from beyond the grave. Located in Mesquite, Texas there is a family cemetery called the Z. Motley Cemetery, serving as a permanent place of rest for members of the Motley family who still maintain it to this day.

In 1894 John Motley caught his arm in some gin machinery and as a result the seventeen-year-old was forced to live with only one arm. The arm was buried at the family cemetery but like Waldron, the young man knew something did not feel right about the arm he no longer had. He complained of feeling like there were ants crawling all over his skin. The arm was exhumed and shockingly they found that there was a way for bugs to get in and out and at the time of the exhumation they found the arm covered with ants. The arm was taken, sealed in an air-tight box, and reburied. Motley said he never felt the crawling phantom sensations again.

As luck would have it (or not), John Motley is not the only member of his family to have a separated limb buried in their family cemetery. In 1911 G.C. Motley was riding a horse when the animal took off causing him to fall and get his foot trapped in a stirrup. The injured foot became badly infected and doctors amputated it, giving it a resting place in the same Motley family cemetery as John’s arm.

Both G.C. and John Motley were buried in separate plots from their dearly departed limbs.

Marker for the Z. Motley Cemetery. Image via  Nicolas Henderson  Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The phantom pains and sensations felt by Benjamin Waldron and John Motely and feared by Captain Samuel Jones were one factor in the burials of their limbs, but for others the need for a proper sendoff was rooted in a much more spiritual belief. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have varying beliefs on the burial of limbs with some faiths believing it is required to bury the limbs in a grave intended for the person when they pass or in a grave specifically for limbs. Some believe that even though the limbs are to be buried, they are not entitled to the same ceremony and prayers as a whole body. According to some Christian belief systems, the limb was required for the soul to be complete in the afterlife where it would be reunited with its owner, leading to scenarios where limbs were exhumed only to be re-buried with their person.

Perhaps it is this lack of reunion that led to the legend of Richard Bertram Barrett’s arm to come crawling out every Halloween night…it’s still looking for its human buried eleven miles away because it wants to be reunited so it too can rest.

Evidence of amputations and limb burials go back tens of thousands of years. Whether carried out at a sacred burial location or marked with a professionally engraved tombstone detailing some bad timing with dynamite, this notion, this importance, this reverence in honoring all parts of the person has endured over millennia, adapting and evolving alongside the same human creatures the practice honors. Buried alone or with family members, there are stones all over the world that speak to the feeling that even the pieces deserve peace.

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Sources

You’ve GottaHhand it to Them: A Look at Limb Graves by Robyn S. Lacy. Spade and the Grave Death and Burial Through an Archaeological Lens. April 4th 2021. https://spadeandthegrave.com/2021/04/04/youve-gotta-hand-it-to-them-a-look-at-limb-graves/

There Are Centuries-Old Grave Sites Just For Amputated Limbs That You Can Still Visit by Laura Allan. Ranker. September 23rd 2021. https://www.ranker.com/list/grave-sites-for-amputated-limbs/laura-allan

Object Lesson: Desire Tripp and her Arm’s Gravestone by Nicole Belolan. Common Place the Journal of Early American Life. https://commonplace.online/article/object-lesson-desire-tripp-arms-gravestone/

History Bytes: Common Burying Ground. Newport Historical Society. February 25th 2016. https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-common-burying-ground/

Stanley Church of Christ. Historic Rural Churches. https://www.hrcga.org/church/stanley-church/

Waldron's Leg by Rick Just. October 30th 2020. https://www.rickjust.com/blog/waldrons-leg

The Arm of Buel Stanley. Atlas Obscura. January 5th 2021. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-arm-of-buel-stanley

Grave of Captain Jones's Leg. Atlas Obscura. August 16th 2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/captain-jones-leg

Grave of Bert Barrett's Left Arm. Atlas Obscura. January 12th 2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-bert-barretts-left-arm

[husheduphistory]

Strange in Chains: Two Prisoners with Stories that go much Deeper that the Surface

The Pakistani town of Charsadda has witnessed first-hand how quickly war and time can transform a place. Originally called Dheri, the town is said to have been originally settled by Pashtun tribes from Afghanistan who were fleeing persecution. The location of Dheri attracted a great deal of attention and over time it became heavily populated by the Sikhs who established a monopoly of businesses there. In the 1830s aggressive hands brought a time of change to the town and its inhabitants. Some endured the shifts, some succumbed, and in one case there are some responsible entities that are still standing outside in their chains nearly two centuries later.

In 1835 the town of Dheri’s name was changed to Sikho Dheri and in the same year Maharaja Ranjit Singh laid the foundation to Fort Shankar Gah, which would also undergo a name change in 1876 and then become known as Shabqadar. The Maharajah built a formidable Sikh army, trained by European generals with experience in major battles like the Battle of Waterloo, and they helped keep an eye on some of the many factions that were looking to take power in the region surrounding Shabqadar. By 1840 the Maharaja had passed away but his son Maharaja Sher Singh was in power, and he was there when the fort was attacked by a large number of Mohmand warriors. It was a bloody battle that lasted until the morning sun rose, and in the end the Sikhs were victorious in pushing the opposing forces out of the fort. They may have come out the victors, but it came with a high human cost. Infuriated, Maharajah Sardar Sher Singh demanded to know who was responsible for the warriors getting into the fort and he demanded an investigation be carried out to determine who was behind the breech in security.

One of the Europeans that trained the Sikh army as part of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court was General Ventura Jean Baptiste, and he just happened to be in the area. After being recruited to conduct the investigation as to how the warriors were able to gain access inside the fort General Baptiste poured over the incident gathering evidence and examining the facts. Finally, after two days, he had his culprit.

When General Baptiste announced his verdict it was shocking, but the accused had nothing to say. He formally declared that the doors, the twelve-foot tall wooden doors to the fort, the doors that failed to hold back the invasion, were the guilty party. A jury of two men agreed and the two doors were sentenced to be imprisoned by chains for one hundred years.

The fort doors under arrest at Shabqadar. Image via travelpangs.com.

It is unknown exactly why the blame was officially placed on the doors as opposed to any of the people involved in the altercation. Each door was chained to a tower, and although their sentence ended in 1940, they still remain there to this day. A plaque tells visitors of their alleged crime and sentence, reading:

“The weeping willows: In the winter of 1840, a Mohmand Lashkar (War party) succeeded in breaking down these gates. The then Sikh Maharaja Sher Singh (Ranjit Singh son) had them court martialed for treason. The French General Jean Ventura headed the proceedings which lasted two days, having found them guilty as charged, the gates were sentenced to 100 years’ imprisonment. They are languishing enchained ever since.”

Approximately two hours west of Shabqadar is another unfortunate prisoner. In 1898 a British Army officer named James Squid was stumbling through the town of Landi Kotal after having a few too many drinks and he saw a threatening figure, a Banyan tree. Convinced that the tree was moving, and even following him, he ordered the mess sergeant to place the tree under arrest. The sergeant obliged, placing the tree in multiple heavy chains extending from the branches to the ground.

The Banyan tree under arrest. Image via amusingplanet.com.

Visitors today can still visit the tree, which tells its story through a sign that plainly states:

“I am under arrest. One evening a British officer heavily drunk thought that I was moving from my original location and ordered mess sergeant to arrest me since then I am under arrest.”

Though originating as what some might see as a humorous story, the tree is seen by many as a solemn reminder of the chapters of Pakistan’s past that are deeply intertwined with the British. Pakistan gained their independence from England in 1947 but when the Banyan tree was arrested it was in the midst of British colonialism. Today the image of the tree in chains represents that oppressiveness and how the people of Pakistan were treated during that time and represents the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), laws drafted specifically in opposition to British Raj and their rule. As expressed by a local photojournalist, the tree “shows the oppression of British rule in the subcontinent and just imagine if a British officer could put a tree in chains then how were they treating the locals of that era?"

Today both Shabqadar and the Banyan tree are visited by thousands of people each year as tourist attractions but their stories go far deeper than just inanimate objects officially placed under arrest. The failed fort doors and the innocent tree tell stories of both individual incidents and whole timeframes that are written deeply into the complex and rich history of Pakistan and how it is still imprinted on the country today.

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Sources:

The Weeping Willows of Shabqadar, Pakistan. Travelpangs.com. August 10 2020. https://www.travelpangs.com/post/the-weeping-willows-of-shabqadar

The Doors that won't Open by Syed Rizwan Mahboob. September 13 2015. https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/559381-doors-sentenced-100-years-shabqadar-fort

The Doors of Shabqadar Fort by Sadaf Shahzad. June 24 2021. https://www.youlinmagazine.com/article/the-doors-of-shabqadar-fort/MjAyOA

Colonial rustlings: Under the shade of the chained banyan tree. Published in The Express Tribune, January 6th, 2013. https://tribune.com.pk/story/489734/colonial-rustlings-under-the-shade-of-the-chained-banyan-tree/

This chained, century-old tree in Pakistan is a perfect metaphor for colonialism by Ishaan Tharoor. September 3 2016.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/03/this-chained-century-old-tree-in-pakistan-is-a-perfect-metaphor-for-colonialism/

The Tree That Was Arrested by Kaushik Patowary. September 6 2016. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/09/the-tree-that-was-arrested.html

Tree in Pakistan remains ‘under arrest’ for 120 years by By Islamuddin Sajid. February 5 2018. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/tree-in-pakistan-remains-under-arrest-for-120-years/1132523

[husheduphistory]

Dealt a Hand of Death: The Terrible Table of the Delta Saloon

When gold was discovered in California on January 24th 1848 it changed the landscape of the country with approximately 300,000 people swarming to the state from all over dreaming of striking it rich and finding fortune in the ground. Undoubtedly, the California Gold Rush was familiar to Henry T. “Pancake” Comstock, a Canadian miner and acquaintance with brothers Ethan Allen and Hoesa Ballou Grosh. The Grosh brothers were veterans of the California gold fields and in the fall of 1857 they discovered a promising ore deposit in Virginia City, Nevada. But, before they could claim the land both brothers tragically died. Hearing of their deaths, Comstock took it upon himself to take over their cabin, open their belongings, find the documentation connected to their find, and essentially claim it as his own. In the spring of 1859, two miners named Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin began to work the area around Six-Mile Canyon when they made a huge discovery, a deposit of silver ore, but their elation was short lived. Comstock claimed the men were working on land he had already claimed for “grazing purposes” and he proceeded to threaten them to the point that in order to avoid issues the miners made him a partial owner in the claim, later named the Comstock Lode.

Mining on the Comstock. Image via wikipedia.com.

The men had no idea what they had discovered. The Comstock Lode was a massive deposit of silver ore, the first of its kind in the United States, and news about new riches found under the earth brought back the excitement of the California Gold Rush from less than ten years earlier. From its discovery in 1859 to 1882 the Comstock Lode yielded what would today amount to over ten billion dollars worth of ore. However, none of the men who discovered the claim never saw that level of wealth. Patrick McLaughlin sold his 1/6 interest in the claim for $3,000 but the money was quickly lost and he died after working multiple odd jobs to scrape by. Peter O'Riley held on to his interests at first but eventually sold them for approximately $40,000. He used the money to invest in other endeavors including a hotel and another venture into mining but his attempts were unsuccessful. He lost everything, was declared insane, and his life came to a close in a California asylum.

Henry Comstock sold his interests and went on to open various shops in Carson City and Silver City. He too lost everything in bad business decisions and in September 1870 he died in Montana after shooting himself in the head.

Henry T. "Pancake" Comstock. Image via legendsofamerica.com.

When the Comstock Lode was discovered it completely transformed Virginia City, Nevada. Once a small mining town it was quickly filled with hundreds of thousands of prospectors, driven by the re-ignited dreams of fortune just waiting to be dug up. The influx of people brought everyone imaginable to Virginia City, and it quickly transformed into a place where law dared not tread. Filled to the brim with bordellos, saloons, and opium dens, the city became the darkest definition of the wild west. In 1872 Mark Twain published his semi-autobiographical novel Roughing It where he wrote about his travels by stagecoach through the American West and later the islands of the Pacific. In the book he writes about his trip to Virginia City stating that “Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed within two miles of the town.” Twain himself was later robbed at gunpoint once he arrived in the city, losing his money and a gold watch.

Dreams, greed, and human beings all swept through the west and Virginia City, but there was one more thing that was keeping all of their minds occupied, a card game called Faro. Played using one deck of cards and being fairly easy to learn, gamblers quickly made Faro the dominant card game of every gambling hall in the west from 1825 to approximately 1915. One man who was well versed in the game was a Virginia City gambler named “Black Jake” who decided he was going to capitalize on its popularity, buy himself a Faro game table, and make himself rich taking cash out of every pocket he could. He was known for being a greedy man, but one night in 1861 karma came back strong and the table turned on its owner with Black Jake losing multiple rounds and $70,000 in one night. With absolutely no way to pay out that amount of money, the equivalent of two million dollars today, the disgraced gambler grabbed his pistol and took his own life at the table. With Black Jake gone the table needed a new home, and a few years later it found a new owner whose name has been lost to time. This new owner operated the table for exactly one night where he too lost everything, including his life. It is unknown if he chose to take it himself, or if it was taken from him.

Playing Faro in a saloon circa 1895. Image via wikipedia.com.

Having claimed two lives, the table was stored in the back room of where it was last used, The Delta Saloon, where it would sit undisturbed for decades. It wasn’t until the late 1890s that wealthy businessman Charles Fosgard laid eyes on the table, and he was happy to buy it. Fosgard had a lot of money, but he was looking to reinvest it and in Virginia City with its thrill-seeking gamblers looking to strike it rich in the saloons when they couldn’t in the mines, it made perfect sense to Fosgard to bring the notorious table out of retirement. After converting it into a blackjack table, Fosgard went into business.

One night a drunk miner sauntered into The Delta Saloon and made his way to the blackjack table. To Fosgard’s delight the miner lost hand after hand until he only had one thing left to offer the businessman, his gold ring. He bet the ring against a five dollar coin and finally, he won a hand. Then he won another….and then he won another. The miner and Fosgard went face to face over and over again and a crowd grew to watch as the businessman was forced to hand over everything. By the end of the game the miner was the new owner of Fosgard’s stagecoach, his share in a local gold mine, and $85,000 (over 2.5 million dollars in today’s money.) Fosgard’s fortune was decimated and he did the only thing he could think of, he pulled out his gun and took his life at the same table as the previous two owners (and in the same way as not only them, but also the less-than-legit founder of the Comstock Lode that brought them all there.)

The table was soaked in enough tragedy and it was put out of commission with a new dubious nickname of The Suicide Table. Year after year, and as the population of Virginia City depleted, the story of the table only grew and it was eventually made a feature of The Delta Saloon. People came from all over to see the table, guided by a sign that cheerfully read “See the Suicide Table” in bright paint as you approach the building that had been restored as faithfully as possible to how it was in its heyday in the 1800s. The table itself was also restored, brought back to its original state as a Faro table. It stayed a Delta Saloon attraction for decades, saw in new centuries, and lived quietly with its tragic past and infamy.

Vintage postcard showing The Suicide Table on display at The Delta Saloon. Image via ebay.com.

Then, on March 11th 2019, Virginia City was shaken when a gas explosion occurred at The Delta Saloon. Amid the damage sat The Suicide Table, unscathed other than receiving a coating of dust. Movers were brought in and the table was relocated to the Delta’s sister saloon, The Bonanza Saloon, right across the street where it remains on display under protective plastic housing.

The Suicide Table is still a major attraction in Virginia City, attracting the gaze of thousands of people lured in by its horrific past. In a time and place that encompassed the lawless American West like Virginia City, there are many shocking tales to tell. But standing out in the crowd is a simple Faro table, created as a game of chance, and tied to at least four lives suddenly lost in the bloody name of greed.

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Sources:

Step Back in Time Virginia City Nevada by The Virginia City Tourist Commission. 2022. https://visitvirginiacitynv.com/history/

Comstock Lode – Creating Nevada History by Legends of America. 2023. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/nv-comstocklode/

The History and Nostalgia of The Delta Saloon by The Delta Saloon. 2023.

The Old West Card Table With a Deadly Past by Danielle Hyman & Adam Aronson. The Daily Beast. September 3, 2018. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-old-west-card-table-with-a-deadly-past

Men’s luck ran out at gaming table by Dave Maxwell. Boulder City Review. June 17, 2020. https://bouldercityreview.com/community/mens-luck-ran-out-at-gaming-table-61432/

[husheduphistory]

When Marketing Becomes Madness: The Bizarre "Success" of the Crash at Crush

In September 1896 the Missouri – Kansas – Texas Railroad Company was getting a little worried about its future. Established in 1865 under the Union Pacific Railroad, it extensively served the regions of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and was the first to serve Texas by entering the state from the north. But, the recent economic downturn had those running the railway thinking, the economic depression of 1839 had caused multiple railway companies to file for bankruptcy and they needed a way to raise their profile. Then William George Crush entered the picture.

Crush was a passenger agent for the Missouri – Kansas – Texas Railroad (also called the MKT or Katy) and like his friend P.T. Barnum, he liked to think big. He heard of something that was a massive success for another railroad company in Buckeye Park in Ohio the year before, but this could be bigger, and better, and more profitable. He brought the idea to his superiors, and after some slick talking from Crush it was decided. The Katy was going to crash two trains together for entertainment and invite everyone to come see it.

An 1881 advertisement for the Katy Railway Line. Image is public domain via Wikipedia.

Crush immediately got to work, locating two thirty-five ton engines that were being retired to use in the crash. The bright red Engine No. 1001 and the green Engine No. 999 were the stars of the show and Crush spared nothing in order to give them a proper sendoff and Katy a surge of profits. Tracks were laid fifteen miles north of Waco, Texas in a location that naturally dipped down in between the surrounding hills, creating natural theater-like viewing for visitors observing the crash. A crew of 500 people laid four miles of track, a train platform, grandstands, and pipes were laid to access water from wells through faucets. But there was much more to build, Crush was going to make this an experience.

The train crash was scheduled for September 15th 1896 and the buzz was deafening, dominating conversations all over Texas and beyond. Crush planned more than a crash, he created an entire temporary town for the event (that he named Crush after himself), that consisted of circus tents offering food, lemonade, a restaurant inside a borrowed Ringling Brothers tent, games, cigar shops, and even a midway of carnival attractions based on the Midway Plaisance seen at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. Stated one construction worker to The Galveston Daily News, “This feature alone will be worth going to Crush [City] to see, ….[This] is going to be the event in Texas this year.”

William George Crush. Image via findagrave.com.

The response to the event was massive. The Katy railway advertised that attending the event was free, you just had to buy a ticket to get there and they arranged to offer roundtrip train rides from anywhere in Texas for the price of only two dollars. The marketing ploy worked and six hours before the main event was even set to begin there was already over 10,000 visitors to the temporary town of Crush. Crush himself had anticipated an audience of approximately 20,000 people but with trains still arriving filled with people the crash had to have its start time pushed back. By showtime the temporary town of Crush, Texas was the second largest city in the state with 40,000 spectators arriving to see the crash. As per the rules spectators were sitting no less than 200 yards from the crash site with only members from the press allowed to sit closer at 100 yards. No one believed there was any danger, including Crush who was assured by the engineers that the boilers on both trains were designed to resist ruptures and would not explode on impact.

The last few hours ticked on like a countdown. At 3pm each train emerged from their holdings to erupting cheers from the crowds. Each engine was freshly painted and each pulled six empty boxcars covered in advertisements that were all chained together to ensure they did not separate in the crash. The event was supposed to take place at 4pm but at that time there were still trains full of people arriving. The time was pushed back and both trains slowly rolled forward meeting in the center, almost like a “handshake” wishing each other well before both backed up in opposite directions until they were each one mile from the center point. Then, at 5pm Crush himself rode out to greet the crowd on a horse, hat in hand, ready to give the signal. He raised his hat and the trains moved forward.

The two engines meet before backing up to their starting points. Image is public domain via Wikipedia.

The two trains barreled toward each other reaching speeds of approximately fifty miles per hour, the tracks and metal rattling and roaring as they cut through the air only matched by the crowds cheering them on. When there was only thirty yards left before impact the crews jumped off and then, the engines met.

The sound seemed like it shook the earth around it. Metal crunched, wood snapped, and there was a moment of silenced awe before everything went wrong. Train crashes were unfortunately familiar to the railroads, and when trains collided, they typically both pitched upward on impact, creating a towering inverted “V” shape before collapsing. This time though, both engines collapsed into each other, and in a moment, both boilers exploded.

The moment of impact taken by photographer Jervis C. Deane. Image is public domain via Wikipedia.

40,000 people were in attendance at the “Crash at Crush” event meant to be a day of entertainment, but now the scene was nothing short of a nightmare. Scorching hot metal and wood rained down on the spectators and projectiles flew through the air hitting people up to half a mile away with no warning. Teenager Ernest Darnel was sitting in a tree watching the event when a ten-pound section of brake chain hit him in the head killing him instantly. A daughter of a local farmer was hit by a piece of iron and later died on their way home. Photographer Jervis C. Deane was standing on the press platform when a bolt took out his right eye, after which he handed his equipment to his brothers and instructed them to keep taking pictures of the chaos unfolding before them. Wood and iron fell like hail killing two and injuring many others. One person in attendance, a Confederate veteran from the Civil War, later stated that the scene of smoke and screaming “was more frightening than Pickett’s Last Charge at Gettysburg,” And yet, while some ran for their lives, others rushed toward the wreck grabbing pieces of metal and wood as souvenirs.

The “Crash at Crush” started off as a wildly successful event that both entertained people from all over the country and gave the Katy an incredible boost in both their finances and reputation. When the crash erupted taking lives along with it, the Katy management immediately fired Crush and braced for another decimating impact from the public. But, shockingly, the public outcry never came and instead people absolutely embraced the crash. Businesses all over Texas began to run their own marketing based on the event with places like a Houston laundry business advertising that like the crash, they would also make the dirt fly off your clothes. Even Jervis C. Deane, the photographer who lost an eye when he was hit by a bolt released advertisements stating “Having gotten all the loose screws and other hardware out of my head, am now ready for all photographic business.” It was praised not as a tragedy, but as a “howling success.”

The moment of explosion. This is one of the last photographs taken by Jervis C. Deane before losing an eye from the crash. Image is public domain via Wikipedia.

William George Crush was hired back to the Katy line the next day and he remained an employee until he retired decades later. The Katy line quietly settled any lawsuits brought to them and Deane was also awarded an additional $10,000 and a lifetime rail pass for his injuries.

When the Katy railway line was looking for a way to revive their name, it was probably the last thing on their minds that the key to promoting their trains was to destroy them in front of an audience. The initial shock was rooted in positives, a massive success with 40,000 people buying train tickets and coming to an event that seemed insane but proved to be genius. That quickly turned when the cheering turned to screams as iron and wood rained down upon the masses, taking two lives with it. But then, amazingly, that was not the end of the Katy lines and the lives lost were quickly and quietly settled while all of Texas and beyond took a tragedy and turned it into taglines. Many other companies saw the result of the Crash at Crush and it set off a wave of staged train wrecks in the following decades with people gathering by the thousands to watch them. William Crush came to the Katy Railway lines with an unhinged, bizarre idea but somehow and in so many ways the aftermath was stranger than anyone could have expected.

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Sources:

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “A Train Company Crashed Two Trains. You Will Believe What Happened Next.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 July 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/train-company-crashed-two-trains-you-will-believe-what-happened-next-180964237/.

Deeringer, Martha. “The Deadly Crash at Crush.” Texas Co-Op Power, 2025, texascooppower.com/the-deadly-crash-at-crush/.

Krystek, Lee. “The UnMuseum: Texas Train Crash.” Unmuseum.org, 2025, www.unmuseum.org/crash.htm.

Ryan, Terri Jo. “Crash at Crush | Waco History.” Waco History, wacohistory.org/items/show/70.

Sanders, J.R. “Crush’s Locomotive Crash Was a Monster Smash.” HistoryNet, 2 Apr. 2010, www.historynet.com/crushs-locomotive-crash-was-a-monster-smash/.

Wilson Jr., Bruce. “The Crash at Crush: Wild Entertainment in the Old West.” Medium, 16 Feb. 2024, brucewilsonauthor.medium.com/the-crash-at-crush-wild-entertainment-in-the-old-west-c9c720e7b241.

[husheduphistory]

Horrors to Honors: The Mountain and Memorials of Emma Crawford

Consisting of three peaks in the San Juan Mountain range of western Colorado, Red Mountain is a sight to behold. Towering approximately 13,000 feet above the earth below, the rock here is rich with iron ore creating a natural color palette ranging from reds and yellow to occasional hues of purple. The mountains and the nearby mineral springs have been important destinations for centuries. The land was originally sacred to the Native American population who used the natural mineral spring water and saw the bubbling as the breath of the Great Spirit and when the town was founded in 1872 by General William Jackson Palmer and Dr. William Abraham Bell it was intended to be a health resort attracting all manner of people aiming to maintain (or gain) their health with the mineral waters, high altitudes, and clean, fresh mountain air. The mountains played an important role in thousands of lives and were cherished by many, but few claimed as deep of a connection with them as Emma.

Red Mountain as seen from  seen from Imogene Pass, San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Image via Wikimedia Commons user Adam Barhan https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Mountain_from_Imogene_Pass.jpg.

Emma Crawford was in her twenties when she moved from Massachusetts to the mountainous region of Colorado. Traveling with her was her mother, a music teacher and pianist that impressed the value of music on Emma at a very young age. By the time she was three years old she preferred listening to her mother playing the works of the old masters on piano to playing with toys and at the age of twelve she was playing in recitals while teaching lessons of her own. As a teenager she played the piano alongside renowned violin and cello players while absorbing the notes and melodies of Chopin, Wagner, and her favorite, Beethoven. When she was not playing piano she took up other instruments with the same stunning level of skill and she quickly became a master at violin, mandolin, cello, and viola.

Emma’s future in music seemed bright but the move nearly across the country was not to enhance her career as a musician, it was intended to heal her. Manitou Springs was founded as a health resort and by the time Emma and her mother started renting their two-story home she had already been suffering from what is suspected to have been tuberculosis for many years. Thousands of people came to the mountains for the springs and air that promised good health, and the Crawfords were among them, uprooting their lives hoping to extend them for many more years.

If music was Emma’s first love it was followed closely by her love of nature and Manitou Spring’s mountains may have seemed like a paradise. She was particularly fond of Red Mountain and claimed she had a spiritual guide, a Native American man “from the spirit world” that protected the family and also beckoned her to climb to the top of her beloved mountain. She of course fully intended on following through with this, but when she informed her mother, her friends, and her fiancé William Hildebrand of her plan they pleaded with her not to go through with it. She was in Manitou Springs because she was ill, the last thing she should be doing is climbing a mountain…but that did not stop her.

It was very late in the evening when Emma returned home and when her mother and Hildebrand asked where she had been she told them the truth. While her mother was teaching a piano lesson she saw her opportunity to sneak out undetected and she made her way to the mountain that called her name. It was difficult for anyone to believe she made it to the top but she insisted she did and that there was proof saying “I did so climb it…and I tied my scarf to a little pinon pine tree on the summit, and I have decided that I will be buried beneath that tree.”

The next day one of Emma’s friends climbed the peak and sure enough, they found her red scarf tied to the tree just as she said and her footprints were still visible marking her journey there and back. Her request to be buried on the mountain was not new, it was something she had stated previously to her family members and although it might have sounded like a morbid form of motivation for the climb, it was not something that came out of nowhere. Emma arrived in Manitou Springs seeking a cure for her illness, but she was having little success. She loved nature, being outdoors in the fresh air, and feeling the sunshine. This combined with the fact that she absolutely abhorred cemeteries made her decision seem obvious and unfortunately, it had to be carried out soon thereafter.

Emma Crawford. Image via http://www.emmacrawfordfestival.com/who-was-emma-crawford.html.

Emma Crawford died on December 4th 1891 at approximately 10:30pm and her obituary stated: “The few who knew her here remarked her calm, unruffled mood, and though her life was such that intimates were few, she was known by nearly all as a musician of rare power and skill.” The funeral services on December 8th were well attended by an eclectic group of people from many different parts of her life. Her mother performed multiple piano pieces of “peculiarly sweet melody and weird harmony” and the Reverend A. R. Kieffer of Grace Episcopal Church led the service, basing his remarks on a poem. Among the attendees were members of the Spiritualist Movement that the Crawford family took part in and one account of her funeral stated that everyone present to pay their respects were “intimate friends and votaries of the faith to which the deceased was an adherent.” When the services were over the next step would have obviously been committing the deceased to their eternal place of rest, but this was no simple task.

When Emma returned from climbing Red Mountain that day she made her wishes very clear. She tied a scarf to a tree and that is where she wanted to be buried, where she could forever remain surrounded by the natural wonder of her favorite place. Knowing this, and knowing Emma’s feelings on cemeteries, the next step was obvious to her fiancé and family. It was going to be difficult, but Emma was going up the mountain. Her casket was taken by hearse to Red Mountain and then twelve pallbearers worked in shifts, carrying it up the peak and to the top where she was finally laid to rest beneath her selected tree, covered by a layer of rocks.

This should have been the end to the story of Emma Crawford, a young woman who died too soon and was buried in her favorite spot due to feats of strength and the tenacity of her pallbearers. But, in 1912 an issue arose when construction to install a power station on the mountain put her final resting place squarely in the path of the work. Her body was exhumed and her remains were re-buried on another side of her beloved mountain. Unfortunately, this was still not the end for Emma. When the 2nd grave was dug it was done so haphazardly and her coffin was put inside covered with lose dirt, any and all rocks, and left with little thought given to the burial being “proper” or safe.

In August 1929 two boys playing on Red Mountain had the shock of their lives when they found a human skull sitting among the rocks. They went to the authorities who searched the area and found more bones and a metal handle. The boys were questioned about their findings but everything became clear when a metal nameplate was found etched with the familiar name “Emma L. Crawford.” She adored the mountain, it was her favorite place, but after she was buried the 2nd time the remains of Emma became a victim of her environment and after years of rain and erosion her coffin…and she herself…became dislodged and slid their way down the mountain.

By the time the pieces of Emma were discovered and gathered up there was no living family to come claim her remains that were moved to City Hall. It was there that they sat for over two years until one of her former pallbearers finally took responsibility for burying her for the third time. When it finally happened she was committed not to Red Mountain again, but to an unmarked grave in the nearby Crystal Valley Cemetery.

The pieces of Emma Crawford lay in rest for nearly seventy years before her name started to be a frequent topic of conversation yet again. The Chamber of Commerce of Manitou Springs were looking for ideas to boost tourism to their town and with a story as unusual as Emma’s they decided they needed to make her and her tale more well known. In 1995 the city launched their new event. Dedicated to Emma and set to take place every October, the event has grown enormously in popularity and people travel far and wide for their chance to take part and to purchase a newly designed commemorative t-shirt.

The event is Manitou Spring’s annual Emma Crawford Coffin Races.

Every year participants in this festival build their own highly decorated “coffin” carts, dress up in costumes, and gather at Manitou Avenue. When the time comes teams of 4-6 people (4-5 people pushing and pulling the coffin-cart with someone dressed as an Emma inside of it) race down the avenue and up a hill to victory. Groups are judged for different categories including Best Entourage, Best Coffin, Best “Emma,” and fastest time. The race, along with the festival and parade of hearses in the name of Emma Crawford has become one of the area’s most treasured Halloween traditions.

In 2004 Historic Manitou Springs, Inc. granted Emma a memorial “gravestone” placed on Red Mountain in the region where it is believed her final wish was initially honored. But, like her multiple burials, Emma also has multiple memorials and in 2023 another marker was placed to honor Emma on Manitou Avenue, the same stretch of road where thousands of people gather every year to honor her and her story with their handmade coffins.

Image of the Emma Crawford marker on Red Mountain. Image via Wikimedia Commons user ForgottenColorado https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emma_Crawford_Headstone_in_Crystal_Valley_Cemetery_in_Manitou_Springs.jpg

To see images and video from previous Emma Crawford Coffin Races please click here

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Sources

“Emma Crawford Coffin Races & Festival: Manitou Springs, Colorado.” Manitou Springs, October 24, 2024. https://manitousprings.org/emma-crawford-coffin-races/.

Hazel, Jess. “The Spirit of Manitou Springs Is Alive with the Emma Crawford Coffin Races.” Colorado Public Radio, October 27, 2023. https://www.cpr.org/2023/10/27/manitou-springs-emma-crawford-coffin-races/.

Washburn, Kim. “RIP: Rest in Peace Emma Crawford.” Springsmag Colorado Springs, October 31, 2023. https://springsmag.com/rip-rest-inpace-emma-crawford/.

“Who Was Emma Crawford?” Emma Crawford Coffin Races & Festival, n.d. http://www.emmacrawfordfestival.com/who-was-emma-crawford.html.

[husheduphistory]

Unknown and Carved in Stone: The Murky Mystery of the Moon-Eyed People

History and folklore live in the same neighborhood. They are spoken, documented, passed down, and sometimes they cross paths and give each other a knowing nod, the weight of which only they fully understand. Fort Mountain State Park in Chatsworth, Georgia is one of those places where history and folklore meet. The story is a strange one and it covers a lot of miles, stretching from Alabama all the way up to Delaware. But in Murphy, North Carolina the words are allegedly given a shape. Enclosed in a case inside the Cherokee County Historical Museum they rest, standing upright, with their eyes gazing out and inviting visitors to stare back just as intently. They look unlike any other ancient form of art found in the Southeast and their story is just as unusual as their appearance. They are an alleged stone representation of the ancient Appalachian Moon-Eyed People.

The Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Image via Wikipedia Commons.

The Cherokee people have a vibrant culture that is filled with deeply cherished myths, legends, and histories of their people and their ancestral home in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. According to the Cherokee, the Smokey Mountains were formed by a giant buzzard after the giant flood. The exhausted bird fell to the earth and the mountains erupted up from where the massive wings impacted the ground. In the years since the creation of the mountains the Cherokee interacted with many spirits, many creatures, and according to their oral tradition, a civilizations of people that was there before them with extremely pale white skin, fine hair, and eyes that were so sensitive to the sun that they spent the daylight hours living underground.

The first written account of these people comes from European botanist Benjamin Smith Burton (sometimes written as Barton) who wrote in 1797 that he learned about these people from the firsthand account of Colonel Leonard Marbury, an intermediary between the American government and the Cherokee tribe. Burton writes:

“…the Cheerake tell us, that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain 'moon-eyed-people,'who could not see in the day-time.”

The Cherokee people had a strong belief in things most people today would consider supernatural, but in their stories of the Moon-Eyed People they were never referred to as something otherworldly. They were considered and spoken about as another culture of human beings, ones that were living in Appalachia before the Cherokee arrived. John Haywood was one of America’s earliest historians and he collected the stories that were passed down through generations of the Cherokee people. Among the stories he documented, some were similar to accounts reported by Burton, that the Cherokee arrived at the mountains and along the Tennessee River they encountered “white people” and fortifications that contained “hoes, axes, guns, and other metallic utensils.” Then there were the fortifications themselves, made of precisely arranged stone, and stretching all the way from the Tennessee River down to the Chickamauga Creek. Were these fortifications created for protection from nature or people?

The Cherokee stories do not mention finding any other civilizations of people along their travels and when these two groups met, they clashed. The text from Burton states “These wretches they expelled” and in his 1823 book Natural And Aboriginal History of Tennessee Haywood writes of “white people, who were extirpated in part, and in part were driven from Kentucky, and probably also from West Tennessee.” Writer James Mooney was familiar with the works of Burton and Hayward as well as the Cherokee oral traditions having collected stories from two Cherokee elders who told that when they first came to the region they encountered people who were “very small and perfectly white” that were then driven from the area and fled west. The story continues that the conflict took both groups of people to Big Chickamauga where an agreement was made that these “very small and perfectly white” people were not permitted back to their land and fortifications, but they were permitted to flee in peace.

The fortifications of Fort Mountain as they appear in modern day. Image via Wikimedia Commons user  Thomsonmg2000.

Descriptions of the “Moon-Eyed People” continue to appear in multiple accounts collected from the Cherokee with slight variations. Some describe them as being extremely small, others say they could only see during certain phases of the moon and that they lived underground, another version describes them as tall with light-colored hair and speaking a strange language. While many historians question if these people even existed, those who believe they did have another question to answer. Who were these people? Where did they come from? A popular theory says that that answer can be found by tracing a line that stretches from Georgia across the Atlantic Ocean to Wales.

When the governor of Tennessee John Sevier visited Fort Mountain, Georgia in 1782 he met with the Cherokee’s Chief Ocotosota. At the time of their meeting Chief Ocotosota was ninety years old and when discussing the large stone fortifications standing at Fort Mountain he told the governor that his forefathers "told of the fort being built by white men from across the great water." The accounts from Chief Ocotosota were enough to convince Sevier. There was another story that claimed to tell the origin of those in the Appalachia before the Cherokee and based on the accounts of Chief Ocotosota he believed the tale to be the truth. According to this version of events the mysterious Moon-Eyed People were the descendants of a Welsh prince.

Oconostota, Cherokee chief  from a painting entitled "The Great Warrior, Chief Oconostota-Cunne Shote" by Francis Parsons, 1762. Image and caption credit: Tennessee State Library and Archives

The story of Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd is intriguing, but also murky. The story tells of the prince and his brother Riryd fleeing violence in his homeland and landing in North America in approximately 1170, over 300 years before the voyage of Columbus. Allegedly, they landed in what is now Mobile Bay, Alabama and made their way up the Alabama River and into the mainland where they decided to make their new home. Riryd stayed behind while Madoc returned to Wales where he amassed a fleet of ten ships filled with Welsh people who sailed away from their home and were never heard from again. When speaking about the fortifications with Chief Ocotosota, Governor Sevier was told these stone fortresses were built by those Welsh immigrants and they were all that remained of them after the Cherokee took control of the land.

There was a reason that Governor Sevier was familiar with the story of Prince Madoc and the theory of the Welsh in Appalachia, and that is because Chief Ocotosota was not the only person to speak about these early and mysterious fair-skinned inhabitants. In 1608 a crew member sailing under Captain Christopher Newport wrote a letter describing their interactions with a group of people who spoke a language that was so like his native Welsh that he served as an interpreter between the crew and tribe. Also noted was how different the customs and appearances were of these people compared to other Native Americans. Years later in 1699 the Reverend Morgan Jones reported that while he was traveling through the Carolinas he encountered and spent several months with a tribe called the Doeg who spoke and understood a variation of Welsh. Tennessee governor John Sevier took the “proof” far beyond spoken language and claimed that in 1799 a discovery was made far inland of six skeletons buried in brass armor containing the Welsh coat of arms. This claim was referenced years later by author and historian Thomas Hinde who wrote in an 1824 letter that six skeletons had “been dug up near Jeffersonville, Indiana, on the Ohio River with breastplates that contained Welsh coats-of-arms.” In another part of the country, closer to present-day North Dakota than the mountains of Appalachia, it was reported that instead of canoes the Mandan people used an ancient type of boat that originated in Wales called coracles.

The claim of a prince fleeing Wales, arriving in Alabama, and ushering in generations of Native Americans with Welsh backgrounds persisted but there was also evidence to disprove this theory. Welsh explorer John Evans spent the winter of 1796-97 living with the Mandan people who allegedly spoke Welsh and followed customs passed down through the generations after the Welsh arrived in Alabama. But, in July of 1797 he wrote to Dr. Samuel Jones “Thus having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians.” The argument for or against the existence of Native Americans with Welsh roots had far reaching repercussions. During territorial struggles this idea of Welsh inhabitants in the new world was proposed as a reason that England should have claim to it instead of Spain.

The problem that England had with this claim is the same problem faced today in that proving Prince Madoc arrived in Alabama all those years ago and began a Welsh settlement is a very difficult task. There is a large amount of spoken word and secondhand accounts, but the whereabouts of the skeletons encased in Welsh armor is unknown and the coracles of the Mandan people have disappeared. Tragically, the waves of disease that swept through the land with the arrival of the Europeans took a countless number of accounts with them. In 1837 alone the Mandan people were almost completely wiped out by smallpox brought in by traders.

If the theory of Welsh travelers arriving in North America and living in the Appalachian mountains before the Cherokee is false, than who were these “very small and perfectly white” people with fair hair that could not see in sunlight that were spoken of by so many different people? Another theory is that these people were not new to the land, that they were actually Native Americans with albinism. Albinism appeared among the Hopi people of the Southwest and can be seen in photographs from the 1800s showing children with light skin and hair.

Image of a Hopi child with albinism. 

Image originally via The Huntington Library Museum and Botanical Gardens. Hopi Indians, Arizona. Albino in center. Hopi girls, Oraibi, Arizona. There are many Albinos among the Hopi Indians, photCL 312 (172), The Frederick Monsen Ethnographic Indian Photographs, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

 Although the Hopi lived in an entirely different region than the people spoken about by the Cherokee, some believe that the mysterious Moon-Eyed People may have been another community of people that also lived with albinism at that time. In 1699 Welsh explorer Lionel Wafer wrote about his experience with a tribe of people living in Panama:

“There is one Complexion so singular, among a sort of People in this Country, I never saw nor heard of any like them in any part of the World. [...] They are White, and there are of them of both Sexes; They differ from the other Indians chiefly in respect of Colour, tho' not in that only. Their Skins are not of such a White as those of fair People among Europeans, [...] but 'tis rather a Milk-white, lighter than the Colour of any Europeans, and much like that of a white Horse. For there is this further remarkable in them, that their Bodies are beset all over, more or less, with a fine short Milk-white Down, which adds to the whiteness of their Skins. The Men would probably have white Bristles for Beards, did they not prevent them by their Custom of plucking the young Beard up by the Roots continually. Their Eye-brows are Milk-white also, and so is the Hair of their Heads, and very fine withal, about the length of six or eight inches, and inclining to a Curl. And what is yet more strange, their Eye-lids bend and open in an oblong Figure, pointing downward at the Corners, and forming an Arch or Figure of a Crescent with the Points downwards. From hence, and from seeing so clear as they do in a Moon-shiny night, we us'd to call them Moon-ey'd. For they see not very well in the Sun, poring in the clearest Day; their Eyes being but weak, and running with Water if the Sun shine towards them; so that in the Day-time they care not to go abroad, unless it be a cloudy dark Day. But notwithstanding their being thus sluggish and dull and restive in the Day-time, yet when Moon-shiny nights come, they are all Life and Activity, running abroad, and into the Woods, skipping about like Wild-Bucks; and running as fast as Moon-light, even in the Gloom and Shade of the Woods, as the other Indians by Day, being as nimble as they, tho' not so strong and lusty. The Copper-colour'd Indians seem not to respect these so much as those of their own Complexion, looking on them as somewhat monstrous.”

Although there may never be solid proof of Prince Madoc’s involvement in the early days of North America there are locations that firmly believe this version of events. At Fort Mountain there are multiple markers that tell the story of the Moon-Eyed People and the arrival of the prince. This is the very place where Chief Ocotosota and Governor John Sevier discussed “the fort being built by white men from across the great water” and it is one of few places that can claim to have a physical remnant of this tale. The forts and wall spoken of by Chief Ocotosota are still standing here, stretching for 855 feet and varying between two and six feet tall at different points. Archaeological estimates state that the wall was constructed between 500 –1500 BCE and those who steadfastly believe the Prince Madoc theory quickly point out that the construction of one of the fortifications located in Alabama resembles those built in Wales during the same timeframe.

Marker in Fort Mountain State Park that tells the legend of the Moon-Eyed People. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Although Fort Mountain claims to have the fortifications left behind by the Moon-Eyed People, the Cherokee County Historical Museum claims to have a representation of the Moon-Eyed People themselves. Standing together inside a glass case are two figures, standing three feet tall and carved from soapstone, with no hair and eyes gazing. In 1838 North Carolina Senator Archibald Murphy began selling off parcels of land in the place that would become the town of Murphy, North Carolina. A man named Felix Ashley bought a piece of land and while digging in 1841 he discovered the incredibly strange statue that now sits inside the museum. The road from dirt to display was not a fast one though, Ashley took the statue home and leaned it up against one of his buildings until it eventually made its way to the museum where it sat in storage up until 2015 when it finally saw the light of day.  

The figures of the alleged Moon-Eyed People. Image via Strange Carolinas.

Like so many aspects of the story, the statue of the two figures are said to represent the Moon-Eyed People, but there is no absolute proof of this. And, like the Moon-Eyed People themselves, there are multiple stories circulating about the origin of the statue with theories ranging from it being a simple sculpture of two people to some believing the Moon-Eyed People were extraterrestrials and this statue was carved as a tribute to them. Museum Director Wanda Stalcup acknowledges the theory of the Moon-Eyed People and the statue’s alleged connection, stating “They were a legend of the Cherokee…The Moon-Eyed People were supposed to be people who only came out at night. They were light-skinned and had big blue eyes." However, Stalcup keeps the door open to all ideas, saying simply that everyone is entitled to their opinion because no one knows what they are.

The Moon-Eyed People have been appearing in spoken word accounts and theories for hundreds of years and despite centuries of speculation as to who they are and where they came from they remain a mystery, unable to be proven or disproven. Perhaps they were Native Americans living with albinism. Perhaps they were descendants of a Welsh prince whose legitimacy has disappeared along with the many years since his arrival. Many people and locations stand strongly by their opinion, but over all the years there is one thing we can say for certain about the Moon-Eyed People.

No one knows who or what they are.

**********************************************************************************

Sources:

David Tibbs. Legends of Fort Mountain The Moon-Eyed People / Prince Madoc of Wales. The Historical Marker Database, 2008. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=11590

The Moon-Eyed People. North Carolina Ghosts. https://northcarolinaghosts.com/mountains/moon-eyed-people/

Exploring the Mysterious North American Moon-Eyed People. Ancient Origins Reconstructing the Story of Humanity’s Past. 2022. https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-americas/moon-eyed-people-0016334

Vicky Verma. Moon-Eyed People From Ancient America With Pale Skin Were Afraid Of Daylight, Why? Journal News Online. 2022. https://journalnews.com.ph/moon-eyed-people-from-ancient-america-with-pale-skin-were-afraid-of-daylight-why/

Beth Lawrence. Appalachia’s Lost Colony The mystery of the Moon Eyed settlers. The Sylva Herald and Ruralite. 2020. http://www.thesylvaherald.com/news/article_63be7a46-193a-11eb-bcb1-9b6452791b80.html

Ben Johnson. The discovery of America… by a Welsh Prince? Historic UK. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/The-discovery-of-America-by-Welsh-Prince/

The Moon-Eyed People. Roadside America. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/51476

[husheduphistory]

Fightin' Words: Abe, the Armstrongs, and the Life Changing Almanac

It’s a fun fact, the kind that comes out during parties, trivia games, or just in casual conversation. “Hey, did you know Abraham Lincoln is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame?” As odd as it may sound, it is partially true. Before he became one of the most important figures in American history young Lincoln was many things, a self-taught student, rail-splitter, and a boatman to name a few. But, one of the biggest turning points of his life came to him as a young clerk where a simple show of athletic prowess would tie him to a murder trial decades later.

By 1831 Lincoln was living in New Salem, Illinois and working as a clerk in a grocery store owned by Denton Offutt while studying law. He was only twenty-two years old but the six-foot-four-inch tall Lincoln had developed a reputation for being a formidable wrestler with an undefeated string of wins in the catch-as-catch-can style of hand-to-hand wrestling. This type of reputation spread quickly in the rough and tumble town of New Salem, and it caught the ears of The Clary's Grove Boys, a nearby gang of men who spent their days drinking, fighting, pranking people, and spreading a general storm of rowdiness wherever they traveled. Offutt was continually impressed by his new employee, openly bragging about how Lincoln was mentally and physically superior to any of The Clary’s Grove Boys and that he could easily take any of them down in a fight. The Clary’s Grove Boys heard the claim loud and clear and their “champion” Jack Armstrong was up for the challenge.

The accounts of the fight between Abraham Lincoln and Jack Armstrong vary depending on the source. Some accounts say that the battle lines were drawn clearly between Lincoln and Armstrong while others say that Lincoln bet Armstrong ten dollars that he could find a man who could beat him and on the day of the fight no one showed leading to Lincoln calmly stating “Look here, Jack, my man isn’t here yet, but rather than lose that ten dollars I will wrestle with you myself.” Armstrong was no small opponent, but he had no idea who he was tangling with when he locked arms with Lincoln. Given his reputation as being a bully the entire town came out to see the brawl and the two men exchanged blows and grappled with each other, each unable to pin the other to the ground but with Lincoln clearly having the upper hand. Accounts say that at one point Lincoln grabbed Armstrong by the neck and held him at arm’s length while shaking him, laughing as other members of The Clary’s Grove Boys struck his legs with zero effect. There is an unclear picture as to who even won this fight, but what is known is that at the end of it a battered and bruised Armstrong shook Lincoln’s hand and declared "Boys, Abe Lincoln is the best fellow that ever broke into this settlement. He shall be one of us."

Print "There was a Man: Abe Lincoln Licks Jack Armstrong" by Harold von Schmidt for the July 1949 issue of Esquire Magazine. Image via www.lincolncollection.org.

The fight with Armstrong changed Lincoln’s entire persona in New Salem, making him a beloved and well-respected figure in the town. He became a voice of reason to the hijinks of The Clary’s Grove Boys, sometimes stepping in as mediator and diffusing disagreements before they came to blows. He also got his first taste of leadership, later being appointed as captain of the local militia unit and moving on to serve in the Black Hawk War. Perhaps the most surprising outcome was the bond between Lincoln and Armstrong who became extremely close friends after their brawl. As years went on Lincoln was welcomed into the Armstrong family home of Jack and his wife Hannah and he would often stay there both for friendly visits and when he found himself without work. When Jack and Hannah welcomed their son William into the world in 1833, Lincoln would often rock the baby to sleep during his visits. No one in the room could have predicted how their paths would cross one day.

Jack Armstrong. Image via http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/

Lincoln’s career in politics and law continued to grow steadily over the next decades but while Lincoln was building his fabled career in law the twenty-four year old William “Duff” Armstrong found himself on the other side of it. In August of 1857 a religious camp meeting held in Mason county Illinois was winding down after multiple days of congregating. On August 29th 1857, the night before the meeting was to officially conclude, Duff and some others were spending time around the whiskey wagons and they decided to sample the goods. After drinking heavily Duff lay down on a bench to sleep off the effects of the alcohol and he was left alone until approximately 8pm when a local farmer by the name of James P. Metzker rode his horse into the vicinity. Metzker was also intoxicated and he made the fateful decision to grab the sleeping man’s leg, spit in his face, and drag him to the ground waking the sleeping beast of Armstrong and causing the two of them to get into a heated brawl. According to Duff’s brother, A.P. Armstrong, the two men eventually stopped throwing fists and decided to have some more drinks together. He goes on to state that after this friendly exchange Metzker proceeded to get into another fight with another man that was drinking with them named J.H. Norris. Eventually Metzker left the scene on his horse, falling off several times in the process but eventually making it home. The only three that truly know what happened that night are Armstrong, Norris, and Metzker, but two days later Metzker was dead, having succumbed to two fractures to his skull that doctors concluded could not have come from him falling off his horse. The Mason County Sheriff arrested both Norris and Armstrong for the murder of James P. Metzker.

William "Duff" Armstrong. Image via hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu.

Armstrong was facing certain peril. Accused of cold-blooded murder alongside Norris, who had already escaped jail for a murder charge once before, the outlook was bleak. While awaiting trial in jail his father Jack Armstrong died but the man had a deathbed wish, he wanted to call in a favor from his old friend, the young attorney Abraham Lincoln, and ask that he defend his son in court. Hannah Armstrong wrote to Lincoln and his response was swift:

“I have just heard of your deep affliction and your son's arrest for murder. I can hardly believe that he can be capable of the crime alleged against him. It does not seem possible. I am anxious that he should be given a fair trial at any rate, and the gratitude for your long-continued kindness to me in adverse circumstances prompts me to offer my humble service gratuitously on his behalf.”

Lincoln packed his bags and traveled to Beardstown, Illinois ready to defend the man he once rocked to sleep as a baby in the battle for his life.

The Beardstown Courthouse where the Almanac Trial took place still standing today. Image via abrahamlincolnonline.org

The trial began on May 8th 1858 and the charges against Armstrong and Norris were grim, the indictment stating the Norris struck Metzker in the back of the head with a large piece of wood before Armstrong struck him in and around the right eye with a “slung-shot”, a metal weight held in a long strip of leather, causing “mortal bruises” that lead to his death. The prosecution greatly rested on the words of Charles Allen, a man who claimed he witnessed the assault and knew it was Armstrong and Norris because he could clearly see them by the light of the full moon overhead. It may have seemed like and open and shut case, Norris had a criminal past and Allen clearly saw the men attack Metzker. But then it was Lincoln’s turn to speak.

Up until this point Lincoln sat quietly in the courtroom, “with his head thrown back, his steady gaze apparently fixed upon one spot of the blank ceiling, entirely oblivious to what was happening about him, and without a single variation of feature or noticeable movement.…” When the time came for him to cross examine Allen, Lincoln had very specific questions for the star witness. When asked for details about that night Allen repeatedly insisted he saw it all happen from approximately 150 feet away, the brutal scene being lit by the full moon overhead “about where the sun would be at one o’clock in the afternoon.” Lincoln asked more questions, pressing him about the location and time of the crime over and over again. The camp meeting was taking place in a very densely wooded area that was quite dark at night. Lincoln joked, did Allen have a candle with him in order to see? But the witness persisted that he saw it all happen clearly in front of him and that his certainty was fully placed in what he saw under the light of the bright full moon. He was given every opportunity to change his words.

When Lincoln was satisfied that Allen was given a proper chance and that he had made himself clear about the moon lighting his view of the crime, he submitted into evidence an almanac that contained information about the night the assault occurred. The defense was swift and crushing. The pages of the almanac contained a wealth of information, including the position and phase of the moon the night of August 29th 1857 and it simply did not match the account of the witness. The volume was inspected by the court, the attorneys, and by Judge Harriott all of which confirmed the information on the page, at the time of the assault the moon was no where near a position to be illuminating the scene. Rather than being directly overhead as Allen stated, Lincoln said the moon was in fact setting, which would have left the scene amid the heavy forest in significant darkness, certainly not illuminated brightly enough to see the distinct faces of Armstrong and Norris.

Lincoln for the Defense painted by Norman Rockwell in 1962 depicting Lincoln during the Duff Armstrong trail. Image via https://www.lincolnshrine.org/

Everything the prosecution had deflated within moments as members of the jury and some in the courtroom burst into laughing. Judge Harriott commented that Lincoln was wrong about one thing, that according to the almanac the moon would have been coming up at the alleged time instead of going down as he stated. Lincoln’s response was simple, “It serves my purpose just as well, just coming up or just going down, as you admit it was not over head as Mr. Allen swore it was.”

With a simple turn of a page all credibility of the prosecution was destroyed. Lincoln had other evidence including a doctor stating the injuries to the front of Metzker’s face were the result of the blow to the back of his head, but it did not matter. The almanac sealed the deal in the minds of many present in the courtroom. As the jury went into the jury room Lincoln approached Hannah Armstrong and told her that her son would be “cleared before sundown”, a prediction that quickly came true. Within an hour the jury unanimously voted to clear Duff Armstrong of all charges.

After being reunited with his mother and getting a talk from Lincoln about how he needs to care for his mother and become the man his father was Duff Armstrong went on to live a long life, dying on May 5th 1899 at sixty-six years old. Norris, the man who allegedly inflicted the blow to the back of Metzker’s head, was convicted and this time he was unable to avoid jail. He was sentenced to eight years in a state penitentiary.

“The Almanac Case” became on of the most well know chapters in the law career of Abraham Lincoln and was even used in campaigns against him during his senatorial race and his later run for the presidency where opponents alleged that he used an altered almanac to keep his old family friends safe. Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the United States just two years later in 1860. He was honored by the National Wresting Hall of Fame with the Outstanding American Award in 1992. Today, visitors to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame can visit the Lincoln Lobby with a mural showing the famous brawl between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong that would lead to a lifelong friendship and save Armstrong’s son only two years before Lincoln became President of the United States.

*************************************************************

Sources:

Lincoln's Defense of Duff Armstrong by J. N. Gridley.

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984), Vol. 3, No. 1 (Apr., 1910). https://www.jstor.org/stable/40194333

True Story of the Almanac Used by Abraham Lincoln in the Famous Trial of Duff Armstrong by Duncan Ferguson.

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984), Vol. 15, No. 3/4 (Oct., 1922 - Jan., 1923). https://www.jstor.org/stable/40186950

Abraham Lincoln and the Case of the Altered Almanac by Mel Maurer

The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable, 2006.

“Duff” Armstrong Trial: 1858 Encyclopedia.com.

By the Light of the Moon: Abraham Lincoln's Adventure in Forensic Meteorology (Part 1) By Matt Soniak. Mental Floss.com Sep 13, 2011.

Is Abraham Lincoln in the Wrestling Hall of Fame? By Dan Evon. Snopes.com May 3, 2018. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-wrestling-hall-of-fame/

[husheduphistory]

No Laughing Matter: The Clowns and the Turmoil that Changed Toronto

In the summer of 1855 the city of Toronto was a far cry from the bustling capital city that it is today. Much closer to resembling the Wild West, the city was filled to the brim with bars, liquor shops, and brothels catering to the rotating population of approximately 40,000 people. Mary Ann Armstrong ran one of Toronto’s many “clubs” on the corner of King and Jarvis Streets and the combination bar and brothel was always busy, especially when new faces were passing through town. The sights, sounds, and stories that originated there are incalculable, but on one July night Armstrong’s establishment was the setup for an incident that sounds like a joke but was unfortunately very real with a horrible punchline. “A clown and a fireman walk into a bar…”

On the morning of July 12th 1855 a large group of travelers made their way into Toronto, but these visitors were a little more unusual than the normal passers-by, this was the S.B. Howes' Star Troupe Menagerie & Circus. S.B. Howe was one of the first circus companies to bring their act on tour traveling to one city and taking up residency for a few days before packing up their tents and disappearing from the scene. The circus was only supposed to be in town for two days and after their first performance a group of clowns decided to take in the town, eventually ending up at Mary Ann Armstrong’s building.

Illustration of King Street in Toronto circa 1855. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The image might sound funny, a group of clowns walking into a rowdy, tough, and intimidating brothel and bar, but these clowns were not to be messed with. Their jobs went far beyond entertaining and included the physical labor of building, breaking down, packing up, and moving their entire community to each city on the tour. They were strong, bold, and did not back down from a fight, which was a recipe for disaster considering the other people visiting Armstrong’s that night.

Advertisement for the circus. Image via torontodreamsproject.blogspot.com/com/. 

At this point in time fire departments were not formally established and individual companies formed privately and functioned for profit, racing to fires and charging a price before putting them out. It was not uncommon for rival fire companies to clash in the streets, sometimes requiring local law enforcement to intervene. Only two weeks before the circus came to town one local company, the Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company, was involved in a violent street brawl with another fire company that became known as the Fireman’s Riot. They were an aggressive group, and tonight they were visiting Armstrong’s establishment at the same time as the clowns.

There has never been a singular cause identified for what happened next. One account says that the clowns cut the line to get into the building. Another says one of the firemen named Fraser knocked a hat off the head of a clown named Meyers and refused to pick it up when asked. Others simply say it was a case of someone getting loud with someone else who did not take kindly to their tone. The result was an all-out brawl and by the time the police arrived the firemen were all beaten to a bloody pulp with two of them requiring medical attention at a hospital. The band of clowns simply went back out into the night to continue partying.

The situation was bad enough as is, but the political climate of the area made the conflict cut deeper. Much of Toronto’s population was made up of Irish Catholics but the city government was deeply Irish Protestant and Tory elite, supported by the Orange Order, who were also firmly in the corner of the bloodied Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company. As far as the fire department was concerned the clowns had just declared war.

When the S.B. Howes' Star Troupe Menagerie & Circus came into town they pitched their tents along the waterfront at the site of Fair Green, near the St. Lawrence Market. On the day after the brothel brawl, Friday the 13th, the merchants in the market were few and far between, there was word that something bad was brewing. Slowly they began to arrive to the circus grounds, a large mob of Orangemen of the Orange Order, and before long the rocks began to fly. The circus performers were able to hold back the assault for a short amount of time but when the fire department arrived it was not to help the entertainers, it was to destroy them. The members of the Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company arrived carrying pikes, pipes, and axes. They tore apart the circus tents, beat anyone in their paths, set fires, and knocked over wagons with a bloodthirsty ferocity. Police Chief Samuel Sherwood, a former tavern owner with no formal training, arrived and brought in a handful of constables throughout the day but never put a focused effort into quelling the violence. How could he? He was a part of the Orange Order himself and when later questioned about the level of power he had in his position as Chief his answer was “A very small one indeed…I give orders and instructions to the force, but cannot get them obeyed. As soon as I am out of sight, the men do as they please.” When the Mayor arrived at the scene he took matters into his own hands, wrestling an ax from a fireman who was about to murder one of the clowns and calling in a militia to finally put a stop to the violence. The clowns and other performers took what was left of their belongings and fled the city as quickly as possible.

Painting of Toronto showing the site of Fair Green. Image via http://torontodreamsproject.blogspot.com/ 

The aftermath of the riot was unfortunately familiar. When the Fireman’s Riot happened only weeks beforehand the memories of the police department and the firemen involved were suddenly and inexplicably fuzzy and they could not recall a single member of the Orange Order that was on the scene. One constable said it was too dark out to see any faces and another even said that the entire ordeal was carefully planned so that only people unfamiliar to the police would be involved. The exact same scenario played out again after the attack on the circus clowns and suddenly no one who advanced on the tents could recall anything that happened. Out of the entire mob only seventeen people were ever arrested and when they went to court every single person who attacked the circus that day was acquitted.

Article about the investigation of the Toronto Circus Riot. Image via torontoist.com.

The official word on what happened may have been hazy but the public saw the corruption very clearly and while they could not create change overnight, the Toronto Clown Riot proved to be a fatal blow to the too-long accepted state of things. After the riot it became much more common to question the conveniently selective memories of the police force that was given absolute power with no form of training. The formerly iron-clad coverups for the actions of the fire departments corroded and began to lose strength. The voices against the Orange Order got louder and louder.

One of the biggest indicators that the public had had enough came with the next election when for the first time in twenty years a mayor was elected that was backed by the Irish Catholics despite the hardest efforts of the Orange Order to prevent it. Reform and organization was needed and in 1858 the first provincially approved board put a restructuring of the new city government and police force into motion. In February of 1859 the entire police force was fired (roughly half that were not part of the Toronto Clown Riot were reinstated), a new chief was brought on board, and finally Toronto had a police force that was out of private hands, nonpolitical, and under close watch by the newly established city government.

The fates of many of the S.B. Howes' Star Troupe Menagerie & Circus clowns are greatly unknown and the clown named Meyers has faded into time. Little could he or any of the clowns imagined on that July night that getting into a fist fight with a gang of firemen in a brothel would lay the foundation for the establishment of Toronto’s first formal police department.

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Sources:

“Hidden History: The Toronto Circus Riot” by Lenny Flank. August 20th 2019

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/20/1870769/-Hidden-History-The-Toronto-Circus-Riot 

“The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855 — the day the clowns picked the wrong Toronto brothel” by Adam Bunch. October 2nd 2012.

http://spacing.ca/toronto/2012/10/02/the-toronto-circus-riot-of-1855-the-day-the-clowns-picked-the-wrong-toronto-brothel/

“How a Fight With Clowns Led to the Birth of Modern Policing in Toronto “ by Patrick Metzger. September 12th 2013.

https://torontoist.com/2013/09/how-a-fight-with-clowns-led-to-the-birth-of-modern-policing-in-toronto/ 

“Infamous Clown Brawl in Brothel Gets Entire Toronto Police Force Fired “ by Sean Kernan. November 29th 2021. 

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/infamous-clown-fight-in-brothel-gets-entire-toronto-police-force-fired-ceca014addc6

“Clowns fighting firemen in Canada in 1855.” opposite-lock.com/topic/22965/clowns-fighting-firemen-in-canada-in-1855

“The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855 “ http://torontodreamsproject.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-circus-riot.html